Visitors to a busy South East Northumberland community centre are set to enjoy better bathroom facilities thanks to a four-figure grant from a regional employer.
Briardale House in Blyth has been running 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.
And now, a £1,000 grant from the Banks Group’s Banks Community Fund has enabled the centre to reach its fundraising target.
As well as the bathrooms being fully redecorated, new lighting will also be fitted to brighten them 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 the Briardale Centre 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 300 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 every day of the week.
It also hosts more than two dozen different groups and activities, from art, dance, yoga and fitness classes through to a craft club, a twice weekly youth club, Craft & Chatter 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 we’re ready to get on with a project that will make a big difference to visitors’ experience of the Centre.
“We try to keep user costs as low as possible to make the Centre 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.”
Anyone from a community close to a Banks Group project who is interested in applying for funding from the Banks Community Fund should first contact the fund manager via fundmanager@bankscommunityfund.org.uk or on 0191 378 6342 before applying for a grant to check if their group or project is eligible.