Brookside Community Centre in Hayes is still shut, and its charity has spent £164,730 against £22,290 of income in five years. Councillors ask why tonight.
A community centre in Hayes has been closed since the pandemic, and the charity that runs it has spent more than seven times its income over the same period.
Brookside Community Centre, 70 Brookside Road, Hayes UB4 0PL, is the subject of a question at tonight’s Full Council meeting. It goes to the Cabinet Member for Planning, Housing and Property, and is asked on behalf of the Hillingdon Federation of Community Associations. The Federation describes the building as council-owned, says it has been shut since Covid, and says it has been “left in a dilapidated state externally” (public question 5.3, Council agenda, 24 September 2026).
The question puts one number on it: that the association has spent over £100,000 of its reserves on internal upgrades. The Charity Commission register puts a larger one on it.
What the charity’s own returns show
Brookside Community Association, charity number 1031345, has filed annual returns for each of the last five financial years, all of them on time. Its figures, as the register gives them:
| Year to 31 March | Income | Expenditure |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | £16,740 | £28,770 |
| 2022 | £0 | £83,460 |
| 2023 | £1,500 | £45,000 |
| 2024 | £2,450 | £4,000 |
| 2025 | £1,600 | £3,500 |
Across the five years that is £22,290 of income and £164,730 of spending, a gap of £142,440. In the two years to March 2023 alone the charity spent £128,460 while taking £1,500.
The register also records that the charity now has two trustees, and that it owns or leases land or property. Its own description of what it does, filed with the Commission, still reads: “OUR MAIN AIM IS TO ACCOMMODATE LOCAL PEOPLE DURING THEIR LEISURE HOURS WITH NORMAL COMMUNITY CENTRE ACTIVITIES SUCH AS PENSIONERS CLUB, ARTHAMATHIC, ART CLASSES, FAMILY NIGHT SOCIAL EVENINGS, PRIVATE DAY NURSERY ETC. WE HAVE ABOUT 400 PEOPLE USING THE PREMISES PER WEEK, 10 COMMITTIE MEMBERS.”
The charity was registered on 12 January 1994 (Charity Commission).
What the building was
The association’s own website has lapsed. The domain no longer resolves, and the last copy held by the Internet Archive was taken on 24 February 2021. That page advertised the hall as “Cheapest Hall to Hire in London” and listed:
- seating for 150 people
- 35 car parking spaces, with a further 55 available for hire
- a sports field and a netball and basketball court
- table tennis and a snooker table
- office hours for bookings on five weekday afternoons
The page still carried a notice for an AGM held on 30 April 2018, so it had not been updated for some time before it went.
The council publishes nothing about it
Hillingdon Council has no page for the centre. The address it used to sit
at, hillingdon.gov.uk/article/12122/Brookside-Community-Centre, now
returns the council’s “Sorry, that page can’t be found” message. Nothing
replaces it: no URL in the council’s current sitemap carries the centre’s
name, and it is not in the council’s directory of local places.
The one council activity still tied to the address is a waste collection. The council’s Pop-up Waste Drop visits Brookside Open Space car park, Brookside Road, on Saturday 24 October, 10am to 2pm (Hillingdon Council).
What it means for you
Nothing has been decided, and tonight’s item is a question rather than a proposal. What it does is force an answer on the record to two things residents in Yeading and Hayes have no other way of finding out: why the building is still shut, and which officer is responsible for managing it.
If you want to hear the reply, the meeting starts at 7.30pm on Thursday 24 September at the Council Chamber, Civic Centre, High Street, Uxbridge UB8 1UW. It is open to the public and broadcast live on the council’s YouTube channel.
Residents who want the building reopened have one formal route. A petition about a local issue needs 50 valid signatures from borough residents. Below that it is treated as a service request. Above it, the published outcomes are a written response from the Cabinet Member, a site visit, or referral to a consultation (Hillingdon Council). Our guide to Hillingdon petition thresholds sets out what each level does and does not get you.
The same meeting will be asked to pause the closure of the borough’s weekend waste site, covered in our report on the 6,594-name petition against the Tavistock Road closure.
Sources
- Council agenda, Thursday 24 September 2026, Hillingdon Council: public question 5.3, from the Hillingdon Federation of Community Associations
- Brookside Community Association, charity 1031345, Charity Commission: registration date, registered address, activities, trustee count, five years of income and expenditure, and the annual return filing record. Checked 24 September 2026
- Petitions, Hillingdon Council: signature thresholds and outcomes
- Pop-up Waste Drop, Hillingdon Council: the 24 October date at Brookside Open Space
The charity’s figures are those published on the register of charities and are rounded there. Any charity or association named here is welcome to reply, and we will publish a correction or an update.
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