Our journey began as just an idea, a number of years ago. In 2007 our ideas became reality, when The Village Centre Ltd was registered as a charity (Charity number SCO37829).
We hope you enjoy reading our story as much as we have enjoyed watching it unfold.
We started by investigating the local area – who lives here? What do they need? What facilities already exist? We collated the information we had gathered and created a business plan based on our findings.
Once we knew what the local community required, we set about helping to fulfil those needs. Our first stop was to renovate the buildings we already had access to, once those renovations were complete, we started to build.
We began building The Village Centre in 2008 with Phase 1. Phase 1 was to build a multi-purpose hall which could be used by the community for a range of activities and groups. The hall itself cost over £350,000 which was raised through a number of generous donations from local people and trust funds.
On completion of Phase 1 Build, we now had 5 meeting rooms, and 2 halls available for the local community to use. (We already had the meeting rooms and 1 hall in our original buildings).
Demand for affordable space soon brought us to full capacity, so we had to get started with the next phase……….
Phase 2 was to build additional toilets, a café, and an office for our manager. The café would be the heart of The Village Centre, a place where people could come together, meet and chat in a friendly atmosphere. It would also be a place where people could volunteer to work, to gain valuable skills and expertise to enable them to move on into sustainable employment.
When phase 2 was complete we took a little time to build our customer base, people loved coming along to the café to enjoy delicious food at affordable prices. Having the café meant we were able to engage with much more of the local community. As more and more people got to know that we were here, and the wonderful rooms and halls we had available, we soon had to start moving again.
Phase 2B was to fit out another hall and 3 more small meeting rooms. This phase was key in our development as it allowed us to offer small meeting rooms with disabled access – something we had not been able to offer up until this point. Again, we were very fortunate to receive funding to enable the project to go ahead.
