I have spent the morning at Kings Community Church (KCC), Hedge End discussing ideas of how their community facilities can be improved. We started by reviewing some of the past funding I was able to provide through my County Council Devolved Budget. This is a sum of £8,000 all Hampshire County Councillors are able to give deserving causes. Since KCC has such a large catchment area, any public funding is going to be very cost effective. Every Sunday, the 1,500-seater KCC congregation is measured in the hundreds and probably in the order of 800 people and still growing. In fact, the church is growing to such an extent that it is working on a project to open a satellite church in Totton.
The Multi Use Games Area (MUGA) you can see near the vast car park cost around £30,000, most of which came as donations from Councils and County Council Member’s Devolved budget such as mine.
We then went on discuss the Community Minibus I helped provide, which since it was bought second-hand does not have the KCC branding. However, this led us to discuss the merits of branding and whether the cost of respraying a yellow Minibus white, could be better used elsewhere.
I have written more on this topic, visit my webpages, Public Funding of Charitable Causes and KCC projects.