£195,000 windfall for Randolph Community Centre

An £195,000 grant from the National Lottery has saved a community centre from closing.

The automatic front doors of Evenwood’s Randolph Community Centre may not be working properly but at least they will remain open thanks to £195,027 from the Lottery’s Community Fund.

About £44,000 of the cash will be used to install a vital control system for the centre’s heating system, and the remainder will cover overheads, like staff salaries and gas and electric bills, for the next three years.

The centre’s future was put at risk when Evenwood and Barony Parish Council reduced its financial support for the centre last year.

The venue was established in 2016 through the Randolph Centre Foundation Trust, set up with an initial grant of £39,000 from the parish council.

Last year the centre requested £35,000 from the parish council, but the council said it had a legal limit of about £20,000 it could offer to community groups.

Having already allocated cash to the Randolph Welfare Ground Trust and the village’s Christmas lights group, the council offered the venue only £5,000 putting it at risk of closing this year.

Centre manager John Bogle expressed relief at the Lottery’s funding offer.

Of the capital grant for the control system, he said: “In August last year the control system went down so we have to put the heating on manually.”

The heating is connected to the nursery and day centre that rents part of the building, meaning that even if the nursery is closed, it would still be heated when the centre is in use.

“Now I am going to be able to control each individual room.”

He added: “The heating shouldn’t be coming on in the summer, but we can’t have hot water without putting the heating on, so gas and electric was £1,200 last month.

“In the winter, the gas and electric bill was more than £2,000 a month.”

Mr Bogle explained that the centre could never be “sustainable” because even though it has about 30 user groups each month, the income from hall rent does not cover the energy costs.

He said: “I had the best month two months ago, and it didn’t cover the gas and electric.

“I get told put your fees up, but if you put the fees up people aren’t going to come.

“This grant means that 100 per cent of the income I get from the nursery and people using the centre, I can spend on maintenance and on the community for the next three years.”

Mr Bogle said he wanted to publicly thank his wife Rebecca for her support during the funding bid, as well as Craig Hampton from Durham Community Action for advice and Lynn Stoddart from the National Lottery.

He also thanked the centre’s trustees for their support.