The Annual General Meeting of the Knighton and District Community Centre management committee is due to take place on June 20th at 7.30pm in the Centre’s lounge bar. It is crucial that as many as possible of the regular hirers and users of the Community Centre attend to show their commitment to the Centre, as well as hopefully being willing to participate in the future running of the Centre.
The Committee has been asked by Powys County Council to show that the Centre is viable in the longer term before any investment is made by them to repair the roof.Part of demonstrating this involves showing evidence of a commitment by the Knighton community to supporting the centre and keeping the facility open.
The reality is that, despite many approaches to users and the local community, either directly or through newspaper articles about our predicament, we currently have only 6 committee members, plus 2 council representatives.Our current treasurer is due to resign very shortly and of the 6 members mentioned, 3 have been on the committee for over 2 challenging years and are rapidly reaching the stage of “burn out”.
Despite all that, we believe strongly that the Community Centre is a great asset to the town, with considerable potential if refurbishment and development funds were available, and have worked hard to improve the Centre.New curtains and kitchen equipment have for example been purchased with grants, while expensive and vital, if often invisible, repairs have taken place to comply with regulations.Of course the smaller scale weekly repairs, often necessitated by vandalism, have cost much time, energy and money.
Many events put on at the Community Centre are of course in aid of charities and local community groups.In addition, many activities which benefit the local community, from cookery classes to karate to badminton to amateur dramatics, depend on the Centre’s facilities for their continuation.The Centre is a charity itself with a key role in the life of the town and surrounding area and huge fundraising challenges of its own.
Given all these challenges, unless more offers of help and support are forthcoming at the AGM on June20th, the future of the Centre is in jeopardy.
