Competing plans over the future of a Croxley Green “community asset” have sparked a public meeting.

The British Red Cross centre in Barton Way could be demolished and replaced with nine flats, according to its owner Three Rivers District Council, but the Croxley Green Parish Council has suggested it could buy the building instead.

The Croxley Green Residents’ Association will now hold a meeting at 8pm in the Croxley Green Library on Monday, May 13, as it calls on locals to “help us save and revitalise this community asset”.

The building has been largely out of use since 2019 when the charity said it was “too large for our needs” and required “a considerable amount of resources” to manage hiring it out.

In March, the district council said that the Red Cross wanted to give up the building’s lease and it is considering how to balance the need for community space, the future of the Welcome Club and the site’s potential as “much needed local affordable housing”.

The current plan is to demolish and rebuild it as a three-floor building with nine social affordable homes upstairs while maintaining a “modern” community space on the ground floor.

The Welcome Club currently meets at the centre every Monday to allow residents to dance and socialise, and the district council said it had offered to help the club find a new home if the redevelopment goes ahead. 

After previously launching a petition to stop the redevelopment, the Croxley Green Parish Council said it had expressed its interest in buying the site.

In a statement in March, it said it will “continue to follow required internal processes, and work with TRDC to ensure we have all the required information before submitting an official offer”.

Although the residents’ association said it understood the “real need for affordable/social housing”, it has suggested the building could instead be used for the parish council’s headquarters.

It added the end of the Red Cross’s lease presented a “unique opportunity” to create a “state of the art multi-use hall that enriches and caters” for residents’ needs.