Peterborough family support 'heartbroken' to leave centre over spiralling costs

A Peterborough charity has been forced back to hand back the keys to its home of almost a decade due to spiralling costs.

Family Voice Peterborough has been based at the Goldhay Centre in Paynells, Orton Goldhay since 2015 but handed the keys back to Peterborough City Council on Monday (September 30) after being left able to meet rising costs.

The charity, which has been running for the past 15 years, offers support to parents and carers of children and young people with a disability or additional needs. They also work with professionals and parents to ensure that services for children and young people is of a level where it meets their needs.

The charity has struggled in the face of a dramatic increase in utility bills which would have seen the charity liable to pay around £40,000 a year as opposed to just £8,000 a year pre-pandemic.

A total of around £120,000 would have also been needed to be spent on the building to bring it up to the required standards in the coming years.

The charity has also lost income for a number of groups which used to hire out the hall but have subsequently lost funding and been unable to afford the hire.

Charity Secretary Mandi Rennie said: "Our core function is as a parent-carer forum, not as a community centre service. We did an awful lot of working out and soul searching we finally decided, that with the best will in the world, there is no way that we could have kept the centre going.

“It is not worth forfeiting being the parent carer forum we are supposed to be to run the centre that is still going to take an awful lot of money to get right.

“The hall wasn’t paying for itself, it just wasn’t sustainable.

"Handing the keys back broke everybody’s heart. We’ve put so much time and money into the place. Everybody was sad when we had to leave.

“All of us involved will do anything and everything we can to make the charity successful. We want to raise the voice of parent carers for services in Peterborough. We want to make sure they are fit for purpose, effective and timely.

The charity has now moved to the Eco Innovation Centre, on City Road, in the city centre. A one-year lease has been signed to allow the charity time to search for a new permanent home.

Plans are still for the community pantry to still operate but the logistics are now being finalised.

All of the latest appeals, updates and information about activities being organised by Family Voice can be found online at www.facebook.com/fvpcommunity.