Work starts on Angmering's flagship "green" community centre
ANGMERING'S new community centre will be a flagship building for renewable energy, with solar panels and ground-source heating.
Details of the centre's green credentials were revealed as work started on the 928,000 project, which will provide the village with a large hall and two other meeting rooms in the heart of the new Bramley Green estate.
Parish council chairman Nigel Nunn cut the first turf for the centre's foundations, helped by one of his predecessors, John King, who was a key figure in bringing the community facility to fruition.
Steve Mountain, chairman of a parish council sub-committee overseeing construction of the centre, said at Friday's ceremony: "It's the culmination of six or seven years of planning and effort, particularly under John King's stewardship.
"The village has expanded considerably in that time, with 600-plus houses, but with no social facilities added. The village hall is heavily booked, and this will be a complementary building, not in competition. The centre will have a much wider range of facilities, with a main hall twice the size of the village hall, plus two meeting rooms, a kitchen, light catering facilities and a serving hatch to outdoors."
Val Jerram, chairman of the management committee which will run the hall once it is open — that is scheduled for August — said: "It's good to see something happening at last. We have a list of people wanting to do things here, so we are convinced there is a real need for the centre.
Hub for community
"We know that lots of women living in Bramley Green want to do fitness and aerobics classes, and we have a pre-school group coming in. Rre- and post-natal pilates, short-mat bowls and dancing are some of the other activities we have had inquiries about, too.
"But we want this to be a hub for the whole community of Angmering, not just a place to hire, but somewhere to drop in, visit an information centre and perhaps provide health and other services here."
Of the total building costs, 88,000 has come in grants from the Low Carbon Building Programme and Big Lottery Sustainable Communities fund, with 50,000 from the Bramley Green developers, who also provided land for the centre. The parish council will fund the remainder, from money put aside over the past several years, and a 25-year loan.
Photo-voltaic panels on the roof will generate electricity for the centre, and at quiet times, surplus energy will be sold back into the national grid. Heating will come from water pumped through pipes buried in the soil around the site, and circulating through a heat-exchanger.
As well as making this a "flagship" building and the first community centre in West Sussex powered by renewable energy, the technology would keep down running costs, added Val.
The parish council is also funding a part-time centre manager who will be helped by volunteers.
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Wednesday 23 May 2012
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