Our Purpose
Hutton Community Centre is run by a charity called Hutton Community Centre (CIO) (registered charity 1164605). The charity is made up of volunteer trustees and we employ local staff who run the centre, under a 15-year lease with Brentwood Borough Council.
How do we run the Centre?
Our aim is to provide local people with a variety of spaces which they can use to run a range of group activities which they would like to take part in – we want the Centre to be for everyone, whatever their age.
As you can see from the Facilities section, we have different spaces which are suitable for a whole variety of activities – from playing table tennis to discussing the works of Shakespeare, from dance classes to baby and toddler groups, from martial arts to board games.
In some cases, our hirers are individuals or organisations who run profit-making activities that local people are interested in.
In other cases, the hirers are running non-profit activities – which they also hope local people will be interested in.
We also have our own volunteers who run activities on our behalf for local people – the 50+ Social Club now has well over 200 members, Bingo attracts the best part of 30 participants each week and our Short Mat Bowls Club continues to grow. We also buy in Youth Workers to run our Surge youth club. We are always looking to expand our own provision for the local community.
Who pays for it all?
Although they are very supportive of our activities, we do not receive routine funding from Brentwood Borough Council.
Our regular income comes from hiring our facilities to a variety of individuals and organisations. We set our hire charges to balance our desire to make our facilities accessible to as many people as possible with our need to generate enough income to pay our bills.
It is this income that we use to pay staff wages, utility bills, rent and rates, insurance and day-to-day maintenance costs.
Fundraising activities help us to upgrade our provision in specific ways – most recently by replacing three of our table tennis tables.
Donations tend to be made for specific purposes as well – such as refurbishing a storeroom to turn it into Meeting Room 2.
Grants enable us to carry out larger infrastructure projects – such as the reroofing of the Centre and the installation of the heating and cooling units in the Sports Hall. Such grants typically require us to find some of the funds ourselves – this must also come from our revenue. It is worth remembering that although this money is not generated by us, it helps maintain and improve a publicly owned building.
Have you got an activity you would like to see running at the Centre but which doesn’t run here yet? Get in touch! Call the Centre during office hours or send us an email.