Those members who were at the Awards Presentation Afternoon will already be aware that the Club has been awarded a grant by Red Industries through the Landfill Communities Fund. The news has also been announced by Red Industries via social media. The Grant is administered by the Derbyshire Environmental Trust and Entrust and has been awarded to the club towards the renovation of the track.
Red Industries has awarded the club just over £54,000 towards the track renovation. This is a fantastic opportunity for the club to upgrade the track and purchase machinery to enable the club to maintain the track themselves.
The annual projected costs for contractors to maintain the current track by weed killing and scarifying is over £6,000. The clubs does not have the funds to sustain this long term. The grant will enable us to purchase machinery to do this ourselves for less than a years maintenance cost.
The majority of the grant will be spent on replacing the internal and external kerbstone edging of the track and re-instating the Redgra surface dressing on the track. The upgrading of the track to a synthetic (tartan track) currently remains financially unfeasable.
Whilst this is a significant amount of funding it represents 75% of the projected costs of the project. Under the terms of the grant the club has a 10% cost contribution and the Landfill Community Fund will pay 75% of the project costs up to £54,000.
The club has to make a considerable investment in this project and whilst it has financial reserves to cover these costs these represent 50 years of current and previous membership fund-raising. It is vital that moving forwards the club makes fund-raising a priority. Over the years the club has covered the costs of the perimeter fencing, the building of the car park, the entrance off Ashfield’s New Road, the floodlights and the building of the clubhouse. The last significant amount of fund-raising the club received was a lottery grant towards the cost of the clubhouse.
The club has a strong history of it’s members volunteering their time and skill sets for the benefit of the club.
If you have any ideas and are willing to help with fund-raising, please contact a member of the management committee.
The club has until May 2019 to complete the project. It is planned that the work will be completed over the next few months and currently we are at the stage of obtaining contractor quotes for the planned scheme of work.
The management committee will continue to keep the membership upto date about this ongoing project.