Hardwick Community Centre Working Group

(On behalf of the Hardwick Community Centre)

August 2025

The final design for the new community centre is almost completed. Future plans and elevations will be available here very soon. We will also add them to our village facebook page.

Please try to make time to visit here regularly and use the link below to contact us if you have any helpful comments. The final plans are a product of a great deal of input from residents over the seven years of this project and we are always grateful for your comments. The reason for a slight delay over the last couple of months is because of helpful feedback we had about our last set of plans and we have been making significant improvements as a result of this feedback. 

We are expecting the final plans to be submitted for planning approval in September with tendering for the project to follow and a possible start date in the spring or early summer of next year. 

There is no doubt that this has been a longer process than our planning group expected when we started seven years ago. The first plans fell foul of the explosion of costs experienced across the country a couple of years ago, causing us to rethink the project. This has now been done on the back of what we learnt from our first plans. With help from residents and excellent backing from the Parish Council I believe we have now a better plan, albeit smaller than the original. The plan features a large hall (built with potential to extend in future), a Community Room, a forty cover cafe, an outside courtyard, usable by the new centre and the pavilion, a refurbished MUGA and extra changing rooms for the HSSC. These are all facilities we don’t have at the moment in the middle of the village. 

The centre will attract activities to the village seven days a week. There will still be the school facilities to hire outside school hours but the centre will offer opportunities for all day every day use to our expanding village. 

How can you help?

What we need now is your support at this final stage. Please visit here and look at our Facebook posts and if you like what you see please say so. For most residents the enthusiasm for this project and the outward support we felt was subdued by the cost issues with the first plan as it reached its conclusion. We need that enthusiastic support back again. We need residents to get behind the project again and spread positivity about this new facility. 

We are still planning the engraved names on the centre’s windows of individuals, families and groups that have donated to the project. I’m hoping, once the building starts, to revive this and add more donations which will be used to add extras. Such items as quality furniture, more extensive landscaping and internal artwork are just some of the things that your donations could add to our building. Even more importantly, your display of support by word of mouth, emails to us or on-line, will help us when seeking grants locally to add even more extras and enhance the building. We need your support to be made public again. 

I hope that all residents will start to be vocal in support for us in making this final push to get a new community centre. It’s for all of us and a wave of support can help in so many ways.

Please feel free to email your comments and support to

A.west3412@gmail.com

Make your family's or children’s names famous

We are raising money for the new community centre. Do your bit and make it your centre with your family’s name or your children’s names on our decorated foyer windows. 

We are going to have decorated display windows in the entrance and main hall. Each window will have names on - your name can be one.

Pledge now, pay later

See below how you can pledge and what you will receive for your pledge.

1- Donations

Donate or raise at least £100 and you can have your family’s name, children’s names or group’s name displayed in the window decorations.

How can you raise money?

As a family, why not organise, by yourself or with neighbours or as a whole street, a cake sale, outgrown toy sale, karaoke or wine tasting?

Get with friends to have a children’s clothes sale, a cake and coffee morning, or anything that helps to raise £100.

If you need a free venue for your money-raising activity we can help. Get your friends to donate too, and get them on the donations list.

An example of the lettering style to be applied to the windows.

2 - Be a sponsor

Give or raise £500+ and have your name on the sponsors’ wall.

How? Raise the money with your group, WI, Jazzercise, fencing, Scouts, Guides, pre-school, Baptist Church, or get your business to donate as a sponsor and get their name on the wall.

An example of the wall plaques for sponsor donations.

3- Be a Patron

How? Raise or get a business to give £10,000+ to get on the exclusive patrons’ wall.

Make a pledge

If you want to pledge some money to any of these three areas, email your pledge to fundraising@hardwickcommunitycentre.org. Please include your chosen names as you wish them to appear. Alternatively, you can pledge anonymously.

You will then receive a pledge certificate and we will send details of how you can pay the money into the Hardwick Community Centre fund any time between now and April 2023. We hope to have a Gift Aid option open soon too.

What will happen when I pledge?

Once you make your pledge, you will receive a pledge certificate to your email address. Pledges should be paid by 1st April 2023.

How to pay your pledge will be emailed to you with the details of the fundraising account.

Will I be able to Gift Aid my donation?

At the moment we are in the process of setting up a charity that will play a part in the management of the centre. When this is set up, pledges will be able to be paid with Gift Aid.

You can pay now or wait and make it a Gift Aid donation and we will get even more as it will attract a government contribution. This is the benefit of making a pledge now and paying later.

Will all pledge donations be part of a permanent display?

All pledge donations will be added to one of the three display areas.

Names displayed on the windows at the front of the building, and the process used to apply them, is intended to be long-lasting and the organising group hopes they will be there well into the future. However, it is impossible to predict accurately enough to make this a promise of the donation process. It is intended that they will be guaranteed a minimum of five years, during which time the management of the building will repair and/or replace any damaged names such as through broken windows or similar.

Those involved in the project at this point of time hope that the longevity of the lettering and the desire to replace any damage will continue well into the future.

As a long-term backup, and for historical records, the names of those displayed through donations, sponsorships or as patrons will also be recorded in a decorated book to be held in the centre as a record of the village’s involvement in building the centre.

Terms and conditions

All pledges are subject to the Pledge Terms and conditions (https://www.hardwickcommunitycentre.org/terms-and-conditions).