Community hubs
Community hubs is a face-to-face service that connects residents with support across 4 pillars:
- Help with money, including:
- welfare and debt advice
- Council Tax and benefit enquiries
- concessionary travel
- Help with jobs and skills, including:
- skills training employment pillar (STEP) programme
- support with work experience, training, or to find a job
- Help with health and wellbeing, including:
- food pantry - offering heavily discounted food
- connecting people to their communities to avoid social isolation
- Help with housing stability, including:
- support to access the Housing Advisory Service
Opening times
The hubs are open to all residents, and you do not need an appointment.
The community hubs are open from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday at Edmonton Green and Enfield Town libraries:
- 9am to 5pm - customers are welcome to self-serve and use the computers and phone booths available
- 9:30am to 2:30pm - a drop in face to face service is available for customers who would like more help
- 2:30pm to 5pm - hubs staff will follow up with customers who require more in-depth support through face to face, email and telephony
Please note: The Edmonton Green hub is closed from 2pm, and the Enfield Town hub from 2:45pm on the third Wednesday of each month for staff training.
Edmonton Community Hub
Edmonton Green Library
36-44 South Mall
Edmonton
N9 0TN
Enfield Community Hub
Enfield Town Library
66 Church Street
Enfield
EN2 6AX
How we offer support
As part of the council’s, Early help for all strategy (PDF, 6410.6 KB), we help vulnerable residents with complex needs to find solutions to their problems before they escalate. We also deliver direct services, including the food pantry, and employment and skills support, and refer to other support as needed, such as welfare and debt advice.
Community food pantry
Our community food pantry offers help with accessing healthier foods, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, by offering members heavily discounted shopping. Pantries differ from food banks because food is bought rather than given away.
Membership costs £4.50 a week, which allows you to buy £15 to £20 worth of food and products every week.
The food pantry is open at Edmonton Green Community Hub on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, by appointment only (with 8 to 10 appointments daily). Enfield Town food pantry is open by appointment only on Thursdays and Fridays.
The pantry also offers support with access to welfare, debt management, and employment and skills training. The aim is to address food poverty and healthy eating issues at a basic level and prevent escalation into more complex needs.
We work with external partners and suppliers to make the community food pantry a valuable service. Some of our partners include, Asda, Edmonton Green Shopping Centre Management Team, the Felix Project and North Enfield Foodbank, Baptist Church, Enfield Shelter and St Edmunds Church. Local market stalls also make regular donations.
The pantry operates via referrals from the Welfare Advice and Debt Support Team. If you think you may be eligible for membership, please visit us in the community hubs and we can support you to access the pantry.
Skills training employment pillar
The skills training employment pillar (STEP) is a free development programme, designed to support Enfield residents who are looking for work experience, training, or to find a job.
STEP offers:
- a personal advisor
- access to training and volunteering
- help to identify your unique skill set
- CV writing and job applications
- career counselling
- confidence building and skills development
- a confidential and individual service based on your career goals
STEP is available across the borough, and we will also be running pop-up sessions.
To book a face-to-face appointment with a STEP employment advisor or for more information, email step@enfield.gov.uk or call 020 3855 5859.
Local employers
STEP offers a free recruitment service to support businesses in and around Enfield that are looking for candidates from all walks of life. We will work closely with you to understand your recruitment needs and help get local people into local jobs.
STEP works in partnership with Enfield businesses, and can provide support in the following areas:
- Pre-employment support, such as work experience
- Local recruitment opportunities
- Help developers and business meet S.106 employment and skills obligations
- Apprenticeships with high quality providers
- The chance to become a partner of Enfield Council
To get in touch with STEP to hear more about recruitment opportunities, email step@enfield.gov.uk or call 020 3855 5859.
Construction Skills Bootcamp
The Mayor of London is launching a new programme focused on championing London’s skills offer and supporting Londoners into jobs in the capital's key sectors.
The programme, funded by the Department of Education (DfE), and will help Londoners gain the skills that employers need.
As part of the £18m programme, we will provide Skills Bootcamps for Londoners aged 19 years and over.
The programme will deliver flexible training lasting up to 12 weeks with a guaranteed interview.
If you want to register for the Skills Bootcamp, please email step@enfield.gov.uk or telephone 020 3855 5859.
Why we set up community hubs
Before July 2020, our customers needed to visit a council help desk to ask for help, for example with rent and Council Tax arrears. A Customer Support Officer would direct them to the self-service kiosk to sort the Council Tax issue and give them the contact details for the housing team to solve the rent issue.
Since July 2020, we have reformed this service into our new community hubs. When customers visit the community hubs to ask for help, they receive a wider range of support than they did from the old service. Our Community Engagement Ambassadors ask about the circumstances that brought them to the hubs and find solutions to the root causes, such as employment and skills support.
Customer quotes
Our Community Engagement Ambassadors have received great feedback. 99% of comments received between December 2020 and December 2021 had a satisfaction level of 5 (very satisfied):
- “Very friendly and efficiently pointed us to the right services. Understood what processes were required. Managed to register for housing services immediately”
- “Rajiv was so helpful and patient during my problems.”
- “Helped me so much. Thank you. Great service and lovely staff”
- “Listened to my query and solved my issue and communicated well. Very happy and service with a smile.”
- “I am a School Governor and I want to thank the lovely officer who helped me, giving excellent customer service but also to Enfield Council for opening and supporting our vulnerable customers.”
If you have visited one of our community hubs, we would like to ask for your feedback.
Case studies
Universal Credit
When Mr X’s Universal Credit (UC) payment was stopped, he began to struggle financially, and everything became very difficult for him and his family.
When Mr X came in to ask for support, he was referred to the Housing Advisory Service Prevention team, who worked with the Welfare Advice Debt Support team to find a solution. At the same time, Community Engagement Ambassadors organised support from the food pantry so that Mr X could feed his family while his issue was resolved. The ambassadors offered support throughout the process.
Mr X visited the Community Hubs team again to inform the ambassadors that his UC claim had been settled and that payments had resumed.
Mr X was very grateful for all the help and support he received, commenting that he and his family were shown a love and kindness he will not forget. The food pantry was an invaluable source that allowed him to put food on the table for his family.
Jobless
Mr and Mrs P came into Edmonton Green Community Hub with a few problems, including rent arrears and problems with their UC payments. They also wanted to be referred to the pantry as they had to cut back on the amount of money they spent on food shopping. Mr P lost his job when the company went bankrupt, and even though he has been actively looking for work, it’s been hard for him.
The Community Engagement Ambassadors completed a referral to the Welfare Advice and Debt Support team to solve Mr and Mrs P’s rent arrears, and to allow them to start accessing the food pantry.
To support Mr P back to work, the Community Engagement Ambassadors:
- discussed different options, such as work agencies that offer temporary, permanent or flexible work
- advised about the free classes available at Barnet and Southgate College in maths and English
- provided English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) leaflets and numbers for agencies
Mr and Mrs P were also provided with leaflets about basic reading, writing, and computer skills courses, as well as general community support.
Abusive partner
Mrs L visited the community hubs and spoke to the Community Engagement Ambassadors about how she was suffering from domestic abuse. The resident had two children and needed somewhere safe to live. Mrs L’s husband had control of the finances and refused to pay for food or clothes. Mrs L and her children were also struggling with their mental health and had spoken to her child’s school as one of the children is self-harming.
The Community Engagement Ambassadors provided information about Enfield Women's Centre and Solace Women's Aid. They also made referrals to the Homelessness Prevention team and the Welfare Advice and Debt Support team, as well as issuing a voucher for a food bank.
Community support
We are here to help if you:
- need access to food - visit our help with food page
- are in financial hardship or out of work, or your business is in distress - visit our financial hardship page
- are lonely, elderly or disabled without support and struggling to cope on your own
- need help with other health related challenges and questions, such as vaccinations
To contact us for help, call 020 8379 1000 and choose option 7.