We are pleased to offer our congratulations
to Canal and River Trust on being awarded £500,000 by the People’s Postcode
Lottery ‘Dream Fund’. Together with Help
for Heroes CRT were delighted to receive the £500,000 award for their ‘Heritage
Heroes’ project at a gala awards ceremony held on 28th January in Edinburgh.
CRT has joined up with ’Help for
Heroes’ for the first time with an ambitious plan to change the lives of
ex-servicemen and women through a programme of canal restoration, transforming
waterways across England in the process.
The project will train
ex-servicemen or women with an accredited qualification as they recruit
volunteers to help transform the waterways.
Around 200,000 local people will be involved through events, walks,
education programmes and other activities.
Richard Parry, chief executive at Canal & River
Trust, said: “I’m absolutely delighted that this ambitious project has been
chosen for People’s Postcode Lottery’s Dream Fund. Working with veterans who have done so much to
serve their nation, and with local volunteer groups, we will be restoring and
renewing canals for the people and communities around them.
“The project will teach the ex-servicemen skills in
land-based management and construction. Inspiring and working with volunteers
they will be rebuilding locks, restoring canal-side hedgerows, making repairs
to canal heritage and getting thousands of local people to connect with their
local waterway.”
Its hoped that the Wilts & Berks will benefit as part of the Heritage Heroes but we are not yet clear what it will mean for
the scope of our proposed project. We will keep you posted.
We have received from IWA £366; this
is the Wilts & Berks Canal’s share of the IWA annual draw monies. We
have put this amount into the Studley Grange appeal fund that has now reached
£18,208. It is creeping towards the target of £25K any more contributions
would be welcome..
As Kath mentioned last week, there
was a meeting to discuss next steps on the Peterborough Arms. We have all been frustrated by the
impediments (mainly money!) to making progress in our plans and we have decided
that as a first step we will do the essential to re-open parts of the pub as a
Community and events room in Summer 2016.
This in itself will require quite a lot of work, and we are being
careful to make sure that everything we do will fit with the longer term
refurbishments.
Chris Coyle
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