Splash pad, horse club and old school among facilities to prosper under £3.7m community fund

The Welsh Government’s Community Facilities Programme provides grants for organisations to buy and improve well-used community-run buildings and projects.

Funding is awarded at two levels; small grants of under £25,000 and larger grants of up to £250,000 and is open to applications all year round.

157 projects have been funded since the programme launched in 2015 and this latest round brings the total grants to £28.2 million.

Today’s £3.7m announcement will enable almost £9m worth of projects to be delivered across the country.

In south Wales, the projects awarded £25,000 and under are:

• Ynyshir Boys and Girls Youth Club - carry out essential maintenance;
• Friends of Aberdare Park - create a splash pad at their currently disused paddling pool;
• Porthcawl Girl Guides - refurbish their Guide Hut;
• RCT Women’s Aid - create an office base in Aberdare;
• Swffryd Community Centre, Crumlin - improve disabled access;
• Horn Development Association, Cardiff - refurbish the toilets and showers at their recently reopened youth club;
• Abertillery Bluebirds AFC - refurbish their kitchen and toilet areas;
• Aber Valley Communities Partnership - resurface their splash pad;
• Bethany Baptist Church, Newport - repair their roof and water damage to their meeting room;
• Hope Baptist Church, Bridgend - demolish their outside toilets and create an accessible facility indoors.

The projects awarded up to £250,000 are:

• Aenon Baptist Church, Morriston - refurbish their facility and replace a prefabricated building;
• Aman Valley Trotting Club - create a kitchen and accessible toilet facilities at their event barn to enable wider community use;
• Cylch Meithrin Seren Fach, Mountain Ash - refurbish their current building to enable them to increase the number of childcare places on offer;
• Glenwood Church, Llanederyn - develop a health and wellbeing centre for the local community;
• Rhiwderin Community Centre, Newport - repairs to the exterior of the building to enable currently unusable areas to be brought back into community use;
• Promo Cymru, Ebbw Vale Institute - improve the Grade II building including roof repairs and upgrading of electrics;
• Panteg Employees Club - create an indoor, multi-sport facility to replace two currently unused tennis courts;
• Lisvane Old School - refurbish the Old School building and replace a temporary building currently housing the library and community meeting space.

This week, the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip Jane Hutt visited one of the community projects in south Wales to recently benefit from the programme.

Lisvane Old School in north Cardiff has been awarded £100,000 towards refurbishing and extending the 106-year-old school, enabling them to replace a temporary building currently housing the library and meeting space.

Chairman of the Trustees for the Old School, David Jones, said:

Without this grant from the Welsh Government, our 11 years of planning to transform Lisvane Old School would have been put on hold for even longer. We’re now able to confidently commit to this long-awaited development starting in 2020.

Lisvane Old School will become a modern, flexible and up-to-date centre - a hub for the community and particularly important as the local population is set to vastly expand in the coming years.

The Deputy Minister and Chief Whip Jane Hutt said:

Our Community Facilities Programme is a fantastic opportunity which supports local projects to evolve and grow for their area and its needs.

Offering grants likes these to community-led projects helps to improve regularly-accessed and much needed facilities. These include anything from community centres and religious venues to spaces for art and sports.”

Applications for the Community Facilities Programme are open year-round and organisations can find out more by searching for Community Facilities Programme on gov.wales.