22/08/2026
asking people to please send this to Liz Kendall, if you could forward on your page.
AN OPEN LETTER TO LIZ KENDALL MP
New Parks Club for Young People – A Community Legacy We Cannot Afford to Lose
Dear Liz Kendall MP,
We are writing to you as members of the New Parks community, past and present, and as people who care deeply about the future of our young people.
We are asking you to listen to us before another vital community facility disappears.
New Parks Club for Young People, previously known as New Parks Boys Club, has been serving the young people of New Parks since it was registered as a charity in 1969.
For more than half a century, this organisation has provided a safe place for generations of young people to meet, socialise, learn, develop confidence and, most importantly, have somewhere to go.
This is not simply a building.
This is a piece of New Parks’ history.
Generations of children and young people have walked through its doors. Volunteers have started their journey there and gone on to become paid workers. Young people who once needed guidance have grown into adults and, in many cases, gone on to give something back to their own community.
That is what makes places like New Parks Club for Young People so important.
They don’t just occupy a building.
They invest in people.
One of the most remarkable examples of the club’s history is Mark Selby, Leicester’s own world champion snooker player, who played pool at the club from a young age.
His story is a reminder of what can happen when young people are given somewhere to go, something positive to do and people around them who believe in them.
How many other young people have walked through those doors over the decades and had their lives positively influenced?
How many friendships were formed?
How many young people were kept away from trouble because they had somewhere safe to spend their evenings?
How many volunteers discovered confidence, responsibility and a desire to help others?
We will probably never know the full answer.
But we do know this:
New Parks cannot afford to lose another place for its young people.
Across communities like ours, youth facilities have already disappeared. The places where young people can go, without having to spend money, without being judged and without being pushed away, are becoming fewer and fewer.
We cannot keep closing these places and then act surprised when young people have nowhere to go.
We cannot tell young people to make positive choices while simultaneously removing the facilities that help them do exactly that.
And we cannot wait until something goes wrong before deciding that youth provision was important after all.
Prevention matters. Community matters. Young people matter.
New Parks Club for Young People has spent decades doing the work that so many organisations say is important.
It has been there through changing generations, changing governments and changing communities.
It has survived because people have believed in what it stands for.
But surviving for more than 50 years should not mean that the club now has to fight simply to exist.
We are asking you, as our Member of Parliament, to stand with the people of New Parks and help us protect this vital community asset.
We are asking for your support in exploring every possible avenue to secure the future of New Parks Club for Young People, including funding opportunities, grants, local authority support, charitable funding and any other assistance that could help keep this facility operating for the next generation.
Because once a facility like this is gone, we cannot simply rebuild 50 years of history.
We cannot recreate the memories.
We cannot replace the relationships between young people and the adults who supported them.
We cannot bring back the opportunities that existed behind those doors.
And we certainly cannot tell the next generation that we didn’t realise how important the club was until it was too late.
Please don’t let New Parks become another community that loses one of the very places designed to support its young people.
We are not asking for a handout.
We are asking for help protecting an investment in our community that has already been made for more than half a century.
New Parks Club for Young People has given to this community since 1969.
Now it is time for the community, our representatives and our public institutions to give something back.
We are asking you to meet with representatives of New Parks Club for Young People and the local community to discuss what can be done to secure its future.
Because New Parks’ young people deserve somewhere to go.
They deserve somewhere safe.
They deserve somewhere positive.
They deserve opportunities.
And they deserve the same chances that generations before them were given.
Please help us make sure that New Parks Club for Young People is still here to provide those opportunities for the next generation.
We urge you to take this serious
