ePetition details

Fosse Neighbourhood Centre – part of Leicester’s history and a major part of its future?

Located in the vibrant heart of Leicester’s inner city, the Fosse Neighbourhood Centre (FNC) building was originally constructed in 1898 as Mantle Road School, designed by Leicester architect Edward Burgess for the Leicester School Board. It was built in an orange brick “Free Domestic Revival” style, typical of substantial late-Victorian civic educational buildings. Historic England describes it as “a two-Storey school building with significant architectural merit, which led to its Grade II listing in 1999”.

At some point in the 1970s, the building ceased operating as a school and was converted into the Fosse Neighbourhood Centre and Library. This reflected a broader Leicester pattern of repurposing historic civic buildings into community hubs.

As the centre evolved into its role as a fully functioning community centre, it helped birth numerous socially oriented organisations and community projects including the iconic Crash Arts, a city-wide project that developed multiple initiatives throughout Leicester’s Adventure Playground community and beyond. FNC was also the home from 1994 until 2015 of the West-End Community Project.

By the early 2000s, the centre was clearly operating as a major multi-use community asset. Leicester City Council’s Fosse Neighbourhood Centre information pack from 2014 shows it functioning as a shared public building with:
• community rooms
• library services
• police/community safety presence
• meeting and activity spaces
• public access facilities

Since the late-2010s, use of the building has declined with one remaining organisation located within the centre, the Alice Hawkins Foodbank.

Consequently, following its review of Neighbourhood Centres and Libraries, Leicester City Council has decided that Fosse Neighbourhood Centre and Library will close due to the low usage of the facility and poor condition of the building. This decision has subsequently led to the decision by the Council to sell the building. The council has agreed to work in partnership with the Alice Hawkins Community Project, which operates from an annex to the building, to support them to relocate nearby. One other group also uses the building and will be helped to relocate. Library users will be helped to access one of the nearby library facilities.

However, the Leicester Social Enterprise Network (LSEN), comprised of 200+ community facing organisations, and built via the UKSPF funded Expanding Social Enterprise in Leicester project, is seeking to create a new future for the building, re-instating its use as a social enterprise hub to both co-locate existing and emerging social enterprises and to offer a raft of support services including co-working space, workshop and educational facilities, a café, retail spaces and a series of artists and makers in residence opportunities, along with essential community facing support including the foodbank, welfare benefits advice, access to IT and AI and a meeting space for community groups, and councillors surgeries. To do this it will ultimately need to purchase the building.

Fosse Neighbourhood Centre is a sizeable asset with an estimated 3,000 square metres of internal floor space and circa 45 separate rooms and a large car park.

Our proposal is both an exciting and a challenging one which will require considerable community support and support from Leicester City Council. Not least, LSEN would be required to raise the capital to purchase the building, and circa £2.6M to renovate it. To do this it would need to develop a business plan capable of demonstrating the long-term sustainability of its business model for the centre.

The first step in the process is to invite Leicester City Council to list the Fosse Neighbourhood Centre as an asset of community value in accordance with the provisions of the recently enacted English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.

If this is achieved, it provides LSEN with the time and space before the Council sells the building to prepare a detailed business plan for the Centre, to consult with potential funders and to secure the wider support of the social enterprise sector in Leicester.

Our Vision for Social Enterprise @ Fosse

Social Enterprise @ Fosse will lead the development of a bold, community-led vision for inclusive economic prosperity in Leicester, creating a thriving local ecosystem where enterprise is rooted in social purpose, community ownership, and shared opportunity.

We believe economic prosperity should be shaped with communities, not simply delivered to them. Social Enterprise @ Fosse will act as a catalyst for local innovation, entrepreneurship, skills development and social investment, supporting residents, grassroots organisations and emerging social entrepreneurs to create enterprises that generate both economic and social value.

Our vision is to transform Fosse Neighbourhood Centre into a recognised hub for socially driven enterprise, a place where ideas are nurtured, talent is developed, local challenges are turned into opportunities, and wealth is retained within the community.

Through collaboration between residents, social enterprises, voluntary organisations, businesses, education partners, and public agencies, we will build a stronger, fairer, and more resilient local economy transforming a Leicester asset into an exciting centre fit for the 21st century.

Through a process involving co-creation and community led planning, The Fosse Neighbourhood Centre will be returned to its classic role of neighbourhood anchor organisation, but during this next cycle, the ‘local Neighbourhood’ will be city wide, potentially extending its support into the East Midlands region and beyond.

This ePetition runs from 15/06/2026 to 16/12/2026.

8 people have signed this ePetition.