£100,000 aid for centre
THE trustees of Hesketh Bank Community Centre are celebrating after West Lancs Borough Council confirmed £100,000 funding towards their new building.
The bid made from the site at Station Road is part of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) funding programme 2020/21.
The centre was one of three shortlisted in West Lancashire – including bids to improve the play areas at Thompson Avenue, Ormskirk and Tawd Valley in Skelmersdale.
The community centre was voted for unanimously by borough councillors at a cabinet meeting on
Tuesday, January 14.
The report for the cabinet said: “There is a greater urgency to secure funding for this project given their simultaneous bid to the National Lottery Communities Fund (which would be dependent on the match funding from CIL).”
The proposal will replace three halls with one single, multi-use building and the existing site at Station Road.
It is to be a modern, environmentally sustainable building with improved space and facilities to better support increasing community needs.
Steve Kirby, chair of Hesketh Bank
Community Centre, said: “This is the result of very hard work on behalf of our small committee of just six volunteers, so I would like to thank them and all our supporters for getting behind our redevelopment project.
“This is a major step towards our target of having a new community centre by June 2020”.
Since 2010 the council has collected (CIL) money from new developments which must be used to support infrastructure schemes in the borough.
For more information about Hesketh Bank Community Centre, email info@heskethbankcommunitycentre.org.uk.