Castle Donington Community Hub

Castle Donington Parish Council purchased the Tudor Hotel on Bondgate on 15th November 2016. It will the new hub for the community. Work has started on conversion of the old hotel and it is hoped to be complete and open for business by Aug 2018.

The Background

Since the 2008 financial market collapse, Central Government funding to County and District Councils has been consistently reduced year on year. To balance their decreasing budgets, Leicester County Council and North West Leicestershire District Council have been obliged to make cuts leading to services delivered to our community suffering. These cuts also affect voluntary organisations and charities, which rely on grants from local government to operate.

Three years ago Castle Donington Parish Council debated the impact of these cuts on this community. Ultimately there were two options:

1. Endure the cuts and watch important services decline, or

2. Where necessary and possible, take control of those services for the benefit of the community

Option 2 was chosen and in order to fund some of these services the local precept element of Council Tax was increased in 2014 by around £35 /year (70p /week) for a band D property. This allowed the Parish Council to help fund organisations such as The Volunteer Centre and The Community Library plus take over some of the services no longer supported by the County Council. A further £5 /year increase in 2015 to take on urban grass cutting, means Castle Donington stands as a beacon against most areas of ‘overgrown’ Leicestershire.

For 20 years through Village Appraisal, Parish Plan and on line research it has been clear that this community has desired a “Hub” of important local services. With the current financial pressures continuing, the Parish Council has been trying to purchase a relatively central building to enable organisations that support our community to work together sharing resources and thereby reducing overall running costs. This year the opportunity arose to purchase the Tudor Hotel on Bondgate; a very large building with an equally large car park relatively close to the centre of the village. This was considered a once in a generation opportunity to create this “Hub” and the unanimous decision was taken by the Parish Council to pursue the purchase. This was completed on 15th November 2016.

The Future

Discussions are now underway to provide a facility that will be used by the community organisations as well as provide a higher profile site to the monthly Farmers’ Market. It is expected that the building will be ready for occupation around June 2017.

Alongside this there is an ambitious project to have local transport linking all areas of the village to the Bus Station, Borough Street and the Hub.

Watch the process of this exciting project here on this Facebook page.