Willow Tree Hub

From the survey completed by the community partnership in the autumn of 2006, the first indications of how severe the deprivation in the rural arrears was becoming apparent. Within our village the social housing area was obviously the nucleus of this, but it also was seen to be showing up in other parts of the village, especially where there was rented accommodation and / or older people, who whilst owning their own properties were finding the limitations of pensions very severe.

It was decided that advice was one of the main factors in making sure that everybody got all the benefits that they were entitled to, indeed all the benefits that they had paid in towards during their working lives.

The Hub will provide first point of advice in every possible field that the community partnership can supply, it will attempt to do this in a pleasant and sociable way, breaking down the communication barriers that seem to exist with the statutory bodies.

In order to do this a new building is being erected at the end of Willow Gardens. It will have a small café in which will site a first point of advice advisor who has been specially trained to put the people in touch with the right advice giver for their particular problem. There will be available privacy meeting rooms so that people can ask for advice in private if they wish, and there will also be days, to be advertised later, when the various different statutory advice organisations will attend the centre. In addition to this the charity organisations such as Credit Union and CAB will also be invited to run sessions. The police have agreed to run a police office from the centre and there will be free hotlines available for the public to use at all times.

The large meeting room in the centre will also be used as a pre-school on certain days of the week. There will be before and after school clubs for all age groups of children, and the walking bus will start from and return to there to the junior school.

The other bonus that the community partnership have been given is that the Sure Start / Every Child Matters scheme will be providing an outreach advice vehicle to work from the hub to the surrounding villages and this will operate every weekday.

The café and rental income from the hire to statutory bodies will, by the end of the third year, cover the cost of running the hub so that it will no longer be reliant on grant funding, and as the community partnership have been granted the land by Downland Housing and have the statutory bodies behind us, with our MP, Nick Herbert, as Patron the community partnership are hoping and targeting for an opening early in 2009. This is entirely down to how soon the community partnership can get funding in place.

Norman Cheesmur, Hurstpierpoint Community Partnership and Chairman of Hurstpierpoint Tenants & Residents Association.

We will be providing more details in the near future and in the meantime we welcome any suggestions and ideas. You can email these to us.