"Construction work can finally begin on community centre in deprived city ward"

Holbrooks Community Centre has helped a lot of struggling families over the pandemic



Much-needed improvement works are due to start at a community centre in Holbrooks.

Holbrooks Community Centre serves the most deprived part of the ward and has been a lifeline for local people during the pandemic.

But their facilities have become increasingly run down and are barely fit for purpose, leaving their outreach services at risk.

The centre, based on John Shelton Drive, was at one point serving hot food every day, running activity sessions and an informal cafe to engage with isolated residents.

But staff had to scale back their offering because of the dire state that the facilities, particularly the kitchen, were in.

But finally, after a successful fundraising drive, the community centre will get a much-needed new kitchen.

Highlighting how important this is to the community, Holbrooks councillor Rachel Lancaster told CoventryLive: "[The centre is] slap bang in the middle of the most deprived part of the ward, we've been doing lots of work with families, feeding them, making hot meals, we've used the community centre as best we could but it just really isn't fit for purpose."

Working with the centre manager Emma Shiers, they managed to raise enough money to kickstart the building work, with the aim for it to start by August.

They secured funding from the Coventry Freemasons and the Suez Trust, and have raised £12,000 in total in order to build a new kitchen.

But there is a lot of building work that needs to take place, and Cllr Lancaster said they plan to open a new food hub and social supermarket once work is completed.

"Phase two would be a community cafe running from that location. We're trying to break it into smaller more manageable pieces, so that we can get the funding in to be able to do that."

"We've got enough money to do the building work and we've had donations of goods and offers of help and support to put a floor down free of charge but what we're really desperate for is kitchen cupboards."

Explaining how the centre used to run before coronavirus, she said: "Before the pandemic we were doing cookery classes aimed at 18-24 year-olds, not only feeding them but teaching them how to budget.

"We had a waiting list but all that had to stop. If we had a commercial kitchen we could use it to teach and recruit volunteers from the community, to help run the cafe and look at the possibility of having local young people in to train as chefs."

Cllr Lancaster explained that the centre had also lost a large amount of revenue from not being able to rent out their rooms for events.

The Lord Mayor of Coventry, Cllr John McNicholas, was present on Tuesday July 6 as the Coventry Freemasons presented a cheque for £1,000 to the community centre.