UPDATE
– CHARLES BURRELL CENTRE
For Thetford Town Council - Full Council – 29.04.14
INITIAL TASKS
The
month of April has seen volunteers signed up to support the project - approximately
20 different volunteers to date, and much work has taken place on site to get it
ready. This has included moving furniture around the building to appropriate
locations, cleaning the whole site and sifting through rubbish and generally
getting to grips with operational issues – such as locating and labelling keys!
Norfolk County Council has provided at cost to them two large skips for general
rubbish and one paper / cardboard recycling bin which have been made use of. In
addition, we have recycled where possible including glass, textiles and metal.
A fire warden course has been provided to the volunteers and prospective
tenants. There are numerous health and safety considerations and these are
currently being prioritised and worked through by the Project Co-ordinator,
liaising with the Health and Safety Consultant and H&S Committee as necessary.
Quotes for the supply of necessary services have also been sought.
USERS
The
first phase of users will begin officially utilising the Charles Burrell Centre
from Thursday 1st May 2014. The initial users are; Thundercat
Cheerleaders, Thetford & District Model Railway Club, Red Hot Catering,
Thetford Players, Well Made Theatre Group and Zumba. Thundercats have been
sessionally hiring space through April and are clearly a popular activity
locally. In the near future, these organisations will be joined by; Thetford
Athletics, Living for Life and Thetford Toy Library. Other ad hoc hirers will
also be occurring including West Suffolk College and Adult Education.
Collectively,
these organisations will be contributing approximately £6,000 per month
towards the running costs of the Centre which goes a long way towards
addressing the approximate £100k per annum in running costs that will be
incurred. The ‘Company Shop’ i.e. social supermarket, will be visiting the site
on Friday 7th May 2014 to progress plans. The CB Centre Committee
will be meeting with Sarah Dunwell from Company Shop and Robert Ashton.
ADDITIONAL FUNDING
The
funding application to Moving Thetford Forward for £75,000 in funding to
support the installation of solar panels and to replace some of the windows is
currently being assessed and we hope that this is successful. Robert Ashton is
progressing our main funding application to SIB. Additional funding
opportunities have also been identified.
LEASE
The
main lease between Thetford Town Council and Norfolk County Council is as of
yet not finalised and it is imperative that this is completed as soon as
possible. Because of this, we are currently only able to offer to our first
phase users a tenancy at will. This situation will hopefully be resolved by the
end of this week. Additional terms and conditions for sessional hirers have
been established, utilising the very thorough T&Cs for the Guildhall
complex as a foundation.
MOVING FORWARD…
There
are currently around 50 different organisations that have expressed an interest
in using the Charles Burrell Centre. This presents a number of different issues
and we have much work to do to make the building a well-run, successful and
sustainable centre, but this is a positive challenge to be faced with and it’s
encouraging that there are so many organisations expressing an interest and
there is clearly a need for the centre.
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