BLF: £3.1 million helps put the life and soul back into England's communities

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Wednesday, 06, Feb 2008 12:00

TEN TOWNS across the country are set to benefit from awards announced today by the BIG Lottery Fund through its Community Buildings £50 million bricks and mortar investment in village halls and community centres across England.

Towns from Durham to Devon have all secured a slice of the funding totalling £ 3,130,945, giving invaluable community hubs a new lease of life.

Sanjay Dighe, Big Lottery Fund England Chair, said: “Community Buildings is a fantastic programme that aims to fund buildings which are a focus for neighbourhood activity. These projects awarded funding today epitomise the aims of the scheme, all promising to give a huge amount back to their local communities.

“It’s a great start to the programme and many people up and down the country can look forward to the benefits of a Community Buildings grant in the coming months.”

Residents in Chester-le-Street, County Durham, are celebrating with the announcement today by the BIG Lottery Fund that it is funding the rebuild of the market town’s historic community building with a grant of £500,000. Chester-le-Street Methodist Church’s ‘Cornerstones’ Project will see the demolition of ancillary rooms and the older of their two community buidings, built in the nineteenth century, to make way for a modern two-story structure on the same footprint.

“We’re absolutely delighted to receive this award,” said Project Steering Group Member, Robert Dobson. “It provides a tremendous boost to overall resources and means we can now go ahead with providing a new building from which we can reach out and meet the needs of our community.”

An East Sussex council estate, currently deprived of community facilities, will soon have a focal point for its many residents, following its award of £391,738 to build a new community centre in the Diplocks Estate in Hailsham. The Diplocks Community Trust’s ‘Community Centre Project’ will create an economically and environmentally sustainable building for the use of all residents on the estate.

“We’re so grateful to the BIG Lottery Fund for this award,” said Grace Cameron, Chair of the Diplocks Community Trust. “The idea of replacing the present portakabins with a

permanent community centre has been around for over seven years. The grant is a wonderful endorsement of our long-standing plans and it will help our cause immeasurably.”

The £500,000 award to Redford Baptist Church’s The Well Community Centre in Nottinghamshire will enable the church to develop a multi-purpose community building, which will offer IT provision and debt counseling services as well as providing a café for dementia groups along with after school clubs and a youth centre.

In neighboring Leicestershire, the Rearsby Village Hall Re-development Project was awarded £150,000 to demolish the outdated village hall and build a new hall on the existing site.

Brian Frodsham, Project Co-ordinatator for Rearsby Village Hall said:” The news of hearing that we have been successful in a bid for a grant from the BIG Lottery Fund is just fantastic. Over the past two years we have seen the closure of the village filling station, shop and post office. A new village hall will re-vitalise the area as a community centre for our village but also for the surrounding areas.”

In Dartmoor a £418,456 award will enable the small town of Princetown to build a new village hall twenty years after the old one was demolished. The High Moorland Community charity will develop the new village hall and provide access to IT learning, a doctor’s surgery, library, child crèche facilities and numerous leisure opportunities including yoga, aerobics, table tennis, badminton and short mat bowls.

Further west in Exmoor, the picturesque village of Winsford received an award of £137,751 to refurbish its village hall to enable it to continue its pivotal role as the hub of the village providing services for the community. As well as being a venue for wedding and funerals, the hall has long played host to a range of indoor sports. The refurbishment project will now see the introduction of a DVD cinema, yoga, bridge, bingo, gardening club, art class and poetry circle.

Also in Devon, a £99,000 grant will go towards the refurbishment of Tipton St John Community Hall in Sidmouth, which started two years ago. The back of the existing hall will be extended to create a second smaller hall to cope with the high demand for new activities and services so that events can be run simultaneously.

A Hampshire-based community association has been awarded £235,000 to fund the construction of a modern community hub on recreational ground in Hiltingbury. The Hiltingbury Community Association Project will use the money to build a community centre, which will provide users with two hall spaces, a meeting room, modern kitchen facilities and a community office.

The residents of the Finchampstead area in Berkshire will soon be reaping the benefits of a modern community centre following the award of a £495,000 grant. The Finchapstead Baptist Church’s ‘FBC Centre’ project will replace an existing community centre, built in the 1970s, with a modern alternative. When complete, the modern re-build will be the base for over 20 organizations that provide a wide range of activities and services for those living in the local area.

Finally the Hacheston Village Hall in Suffolk has received £204,000 in funding to build a community centre on a new site in the village. The new environmentally and financially sustainable building will provide a suitable venue for annual events to take place which will benefit the neighboring villages and small market towns.

Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888

Out of hours contact: 07867 500 572

Public Enquiries Line: 08454 102030 Textphone: 0845 6021 659

Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Notes to Editors

• Community Buildings is dedicated to investing in buildings that give communities a chance to improve their quality of life and meet local needs, by offering a range of activities and services open to a broad range of people.

• £50 million will be distributed across England over three years with grants of £50,000 to £500,000 available.

• The programme opened for applications in June 2006. 200 applicants were invited to submit stage 2 applications and development funding was awarded to some projects.

• The programme is now closed for applications.

• The Big Lottery Fund rolls out close to £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours which together with other Lottery distributors means that across the UK most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.

• The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004. It was established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.

• Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to Good Causes. As a result, over £20 billion has now been raised and more than 280,000 grants given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.