The CommunityFund

Active Youth Club, based at Tamarisk Cottage in Shepherds Way, has been handed £5,000 by Lloyds Banking Group Community Fund to help towards the maintenance of their centre.

The centre beat off stiff competition from other community groups to land the prize, after polling enough of the public vote organised by Lloyds through its Community Fund.

Wendy Hatch, chairman, set up the youth centre in 1998 in a cricket caravan on Fairlight Recreation Ground before moving to their current clubhouse in September 2000 and she said it was humbling people had thrown their backing behind the group.

She said: “It is wonderful to think that the community has rallied round us like this and we are delighted to be getting this money. We are a youth club with our own property which we bought with a Lottery grant which is not cheap and it has become run down over time. The kids that use it really respect it and take care of it so we want to give it a bit of a face-lift, particularly with the kitchen that needs a fair bit of work. We meet three times a week and offer services for children aged 10 to upper-teens and this money will help give our club a nice lick of paint. We have five or six volunteers working for us now that came through the youth club and hopefully tidying up our property will enable more to do that too.”

More than 200,000 people across the UK took part in a public vote between May and September to select the charities they wanted to receive the cash, part of £660,000 Lloyds Banking Group is investing through the Community Fund.

Paul Turner, Lloyds Banking Group’s community and sustainable business director, said: “Becoming the best bank for customers means being the best bank for our communities. The Community Fund highlights the group’s ongoing commitment to the communities we serve and doing more to help Britain prosper. We are proud to help Active Youth Club continue the great work it is doing and look forward to seeing the difference the award will make.”