Parish Capital Appeal
Phase 1: Providing inclusive access and creating a space for young people

The first part of our Parish Capital Appeal was to modify our parish halls to provide inclusive access and to create a dedicated space for young people to meet.

These priorities derived from the Parish Pastoral Plan 2002-2007 which, within an overarching need “to become a more open, inclusive, welcoming community”, identified the care and nurturing of young people as a first priority.

The appointment of a full time Youth Minister followed and with a generous grant and even more generous loans from the Society of Jesus, we were able to commission designs in late 2005 for the conversion of underused cloakroom space within the Upper Hall to provide specific accommodation for young people, allied with the first stage of disabled access to those spaces. A contract for this work was subsequently placed in July 2006 for completion by the end of the year.

We launched our parish capital appeal in 2006. There was an incredibly generous response from parishioners to the Parish Appeal, who organized numerous events and made donations large and small. We are also grateful for the generous help and support from the Jesuit Province. This generosity means that we have now reached our first goal of providing a meeting space for young people as well as disabled access to all the halls and to the presbytery. We were able to raise almost £1,000,000, which made it possible also to refurbish the Halls complex and set it up for years to come.

So we have been most fortunate and were able to complete all the work to a decent standard and to re-open all the halls by May 2008.

A heartfelt thank-you to all who supported the first stage of our Appeal in any way.

You can read the full project synopsis of Halls & Presbytery Conversion to full Disabled Accessibility here