School Community Hub funding approved for Evanstown

Bridgend County Borough Council’s Cabinet have approved funding for a new community hub at Abercerdin Primary School in Evanstown.

The school which will jointly fund the project alongside the local authority is planning to create the hub as a community outreach centre once the school’s ground floor basement is renovated.

It will house a creche for children from birth to three years of age, meeting and training rooms, and a community café for vulnerable adults to retrain and access support with CV and interview techniques.

Headteacher Helen Gentle said: “The community hub is a project involving the school and the Parent Teacher Association with the aim of providing the entire community with a much-needed base in which they can meet, train and develop their individual skills through adult learning opportunities and meetings with support agencies such as Citizens Advice.

“The creche will have an enormous impact on the academic and wellbeing development, and progress, of the children in the valley, providing them with vital early year provision – it would also enable parents to re-enter the workplace and ease child care worries especially for vulnerable families and single parents. At the moment the Flying Start pre-nursery initiative is currently inaccessible to the Evanstown community.”

The project is being funded via £195,000 from the school and £105,000 from the local authority with the school also having been successful in gaining a £150,000 grant from the Garfield Weston Foundation and a £45,000 grant from local company Pennant Walters.

This is an excellent example of how we’ve been able to use additional funding from Welsh Government to help benefit communities across the county borough.

Estyn have highlighted the community focus of Abercerdin Primary School and this is demonstrated in their commitment to help fund this hub.

This project is a fantastic opportunity to strengthen links between the school and the community and we’re looking forward to seeing it once complete.

Bridgend County Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Education and Regeneration Charles Smith

Members approved council funding via the Welsh Government Schools Capital Maintenance Grant at a full council meeting on Wednesday 20 October.