November 2023

Still no building but hope springs eternal for one next year. 

We still hope to get our centre built for £1.8M. We now have over £1.3M and are still getting grant opportunities and looking for more sponsorship. We know we can also borrow up to half a million pounds that will bring us to the £1.8M we feel achievable. At the moment we have made savings on types of materials bringing the construction costs down and hope to get this even lower on savings in groundwork and sewer disposal. The gap is closing but of course the more we raise from sponsorship or grants the less we will need to borrow. 

Although building prices are not increasing as steeply now, neither are they falling quickly enough at present to help us. 

We have applied for a grant of £40,000+ from Cambridge Community Action Priorities Capital Fund and have been selected to move to a final phase of bidding for the money in December this year. If successful the funding should be available by April 2024. 

We’ve also tried other local grants (Community Action Funds) but unsuccessfully so far.

We have commissioned more ground exploration in order to try and lower the groundwork costs elements i.e. drainage and foundations in our selected tender. We are still working towards a new figure with Cadman, our successful tender building company, with value engineering to get costs down to what we can afford but keep the original design.  We hope to get the original build design built by getting our costs down and the funding up to achieve a Spring 2024 start. An excellent achievement in view of the scale and swift increase in costs over the last year. 

I am sure many of you realise Hill are looking to build more houses on Chivers’ land opposite the shop. Should this go ahead it will affect the size of the village and increase the need for a new community centre building. 

Unfortunately any s106 funding due from new builds in future may be too late to help our present building plans. It may however help to pay any loans we might take and help develop the centre once it’s built. This is still early planning days yet and, although it’s been pointed out by several residents as possibly being helpful, it will be unlikely to contribute to our present funding shortfall. 

There is another development regarding sponsorship. I have been offering large companies with local links the opportunity, for £250,000, to have naming rights of our centre. This is both a realistic request for sponsorship and relatively cheap in this area regarding naming rights. So far I’ve no takers but I have two offers of sponsorship to name rooms in the new centre for £10,000 each.  

If you know of any businesses or wealthy individuals that might be interested in either of these please get in touch with me. 

My thanks to those of you still helping with sponsorship and donations. Every little gets us closer to our new centre. 

Alan West (Chair of Hardwick Community Centre Working Group).