LABOUR have confirmed the location of the first children’s centre they will reinstate if they wrestle power from the Tories in May’s local elections.

Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow education secretary Angela Rayner met representatives from Swindon Labour today to announce plans to re-open the Children’s Sure Start Centres, which over the course of the last few years have been closed by the Conservative-run council.

The first centre, it was announced, will open on the site of the old library on The Circle in Pinehurst, with others being reintroduced all across the town.

Jim Grant, the leader of the Swindon Labour Group, said: “We are committed to bringing back Sure Start centres in Swindon. We have identified this building as the first that we will refurbish come May 4 with a view to rolling out a programme of centres in years to come.”

The party have made the introduction of children’s centres one of their key policies in this year’s local elections and have vowed to “reduce poverty and inequality with every decision we take”.

Speaking about the motivation for such a move, Mr Grant said: “Since the demise of children’s centres, child neglect has gone up by 75 per cent in Swindon and the number of children in care have gone up by 20 per cent.

“Places like this – Pinehurst and Penhill – are sending less than 2 per cent of their population to higher education. Sure Start centres are there to give people a start in life so that once they reach primary school education they are prepared.”

Mr Corbyn, who faced difficult questions following accusations of failing to tackle anti-Semitism in the party, said that “hungry children can’t learn” and announced Labour’s pledge to will provide “every primary school and nursery child with a free school lunch every day”.

But the Conservative administration stressed that the decision to close the centres had been the right one.

In 2014, the council agreed to consult on proposals to close children’s centres in order to achieve savings of more than £700,000.

It was claimed that the centres were not reaching the town’s most vulnerable people and a new strategy had to be drawn up to address that.

Councillor David Renard, leader of the council, said that in October 2014 the cabinet was informed that of the 628 children under five-years-old referred to social care, only 39 were referred by children centres and of the 44 children under five-years-old taken into care, not one of them had been referred by a children’s centre.

He said: “We chose to fund 52 health visitors to help support families and children in their own homes and communities because that was more effective than paying for buildings that would be empty most of the time.”

He also insisted that his party has “consistently delivered services on budget with a low, affordable council tax”.

However, the strategy was recently criticised by fellow Conservative councillor Claire Ellis. Although Coun Ellis backed the administration’s decision to close the centres, she expressed concerns that vulnerable people were still being neglected.

She said: “We have something that will turn horrible in a few years time because we are failing a whole lot of people, and unless something is done quickly it is going to get very serious.”