Visitors to a busy South East Northumberland community centre can now enjoy better bathroom facilities thanks to a four-figure grant from a regional employer.
Briardale House in Blyth set up a ‘donate a penny to spend a penny’ campaign to help bring in the money needed to brighten up its bathrooms, which were originally fitted more than 20 years ago.
A £1,000 grant from the Banks Group’s Banks Community Fund enabled the centre to reach its fundraising target – and it has now completed the refurbishment work required, with new lighting being fitted to brighten the bathrooms up.
The current Briardale House management team took over responsibility for its operation in 2019 and has been steadily making improvements to the facilities it offers ever since.
It’s the second grant that the Banks Group had awarded to Briardale House since then, with a £7,800 grant given in 2022 paying for the installation of a new state-of-the-art fire alarm system.
The Centre is used by around 600 people of all ages every week from right across the local community and runs a community café on weekdays, a ‘chatty café’ on Fridays and a Meals On Wheels service which sees hot, two-course lunches available for delivery across the local community five days a week.
It also hosts more than two dozen different groups and activities, from art, dance, fitness classes and mental health support, through to a craft club, a weekly youth club and friendship groups.
An accessible patio area, sensory garden and summerhouse are also available to centre users, with well-used community allotments and an outdoor education area.
The activities at Briardale House are supported by a team of volunteers, which the organisation is currently looking to increase.
Centre manager Candice Randall says: “We’ve been progressively making changes and improvements across the centre in the last few years, and while we’ve always kept the bathrooms clean and tidy, it was increasingly clear that we needed to brighten them up to bring them more in line with the rest of the building.
“We had a great response to our ‘donate a penny to spend a penny’ campaign and the upgraded bathrooms will now make a big difference to visitors’ experience of our centre.
“We try to keep user costs as low as possible to make our facility accessible to all, but with lots of plans for improving what we offer in place and plenty of different daily calls on the resources that we do have, it can be hard to balance our budgets with our ambitions to give our community the very best facilities that we can.
“We wouldn’t have been able to get as much done on this project as we wanted to without this latest Banks Group grant and we’re hugely grateful for their continuing support.”
Jamilah Hassan, community manager at The Banks Group, adds: “The Briardale House team, and the events and activities they host, make such a positive difference to so many different groups of local people, and we’re really pleased to be helping them get on with this latest project.”
The Banks Group’s community funds are independently managed by Point North (formerly the County Durham Community Foundation).
Anyone from a community close to a Banks Group project who is interested in applying for funding from the Banks Community Fund should contact the company via its website enquiry form (www.banksgroup.co.uk/contact-us/) to find out if their group or project is eligible.
