Garway Community Centre is celebrating after being awarded National Lottery funding on Tuesday, June 5th.

The brand new centre, which is located near to the old Garway Village Hall, will receive £10,000 to employ a part-time manager, ensuring the smooth running of the community centre on a day-to-day basis. They will also develop the centre’s facilities to support events and activities which will help to bring the community together.

David Atkinson, Chairman of the Parish Council, told the Ross Gazette that he was really pleased with the news of more funding for the Community Centre. He said that “the first part of the grant will fund a part-time manager, who will be in charge of bookings and accounts, and can present to ourselves at the Council how the building is doing.”

He also added that there needs to be someone at the Community Centre on a more regular basis, as it is much more than a village hall. The community ‘hub’ needs to be accessible so it can offer its services to other areas, and he said it was inappropriate to rely on just volunteers.

The new centre provides a spacious hall suitable for Flicks in the Sticks, a Heritage group, fitness and leisure classes, the annual village pantomime, live music organised by Garway Live and a range of sporting activities.

The second part of the funding will go towards equipment and furniture for the building, to accomodate the different types of events held at the centre. They are also looking to hold more live events, to utilise the diverse space that the building offers.

The impressive state of the art kitchen will be used to provide lunches to the adjacent school, and the café area will provide a space where low cost lunches will be served to older people.

The Community Centre also has three wedding receptions and a conference booked in for later this year, and currently holds an outreach health and social care centre, which they hope to develop to be able to provide medicines etc.

It has been three years since the Trustees were awarded a large capital grant by the Big Lottery to fund the new facility. Grants were also received from from the Trusthouse Charitable Foundation, The Post Code Lottery and Awards for All. The local community had also raised funds for a new village centre over many years.

The building is a Passivhaus that is ecologically sustainable and very energy efficient, with solar panels will keep the building at a standard warm heat all year. This is the first new build Passivhaus project that Big Lottery have ever sponsored in the country.

The Centre has already been nominated for awards, including from Herefordshire Council’s Building Control, and by the AECB (Association for Environment Conscious Building), which is a network of individuals and companies with a common aim of promoting sustainable buildings.

Upcoming live events:

• Afternoon in Paris - September 22nd

• Matthew Frederick - October 13th

• Huw Eddy - November 3rd