A resident focussed hub at the centre of a St Dennis community, has been awarded a grant by Cornwall Council from the £7.6-million Community Levelling Up Programme (CLUP). 

The CLUP grant of £96,565 to ClayTAWC, which is soon to become a registered charity, will go towards the purchase of the building from which it currently runs its services.  

The CLUP investment will leverage an additional £73,894 of match funding from the St Dennis and Nanpean Community Trust, which distributes funds raised through a planning agreement linked to the incinerator in the area. 

With the building secured as a local community asset, new services and projects will be put in place to help and engage with residents including working with Healthy Cornwall on self-harm awareness (children and young people), mental health awareness, mindfulness, meditation and sleep hygiene, and menopause awareness. The ClayTAWC team will also be working with Volunteer Cornwall and the NHS (Integrated Care Board) to deliver diabetes prevention activities.   

The money will also improve the kitchen with the replacement of an old, energy inefficient cooker with a greener and more sustainable alternative that will help deliver a range of cooking-on-a-budget and healthy eating training sessions. In addition, there will be a project to create an historic archive through the local Old Cornwall Society and the University of Exeter. 

Local Cornwall councillor and ClayTAWC chairman of the board of directors Dick Cole said: “ClayTAWC has been an extremely important community hub at the centre of St Dennis for over 24 years. Our lease on the Old School building is coming to an end, but the grants from Community Levelling Up and the St Dennis and Nanpean Community Trust mean that we will be able to purchase our centre and our important work will be able to continue.  

“This is an exciting time for us, and we would like to thank everyone who has backed our funding applications. We look forward to boosting the provision of services and activities out of ClayTAWC for the people of St Dennis, Clay Country and even further afield.” 

Cllr Louis Gardner, Cornwall Council portfolio holder for economy, said: “This is the first successful grant application from the second phase of the programme and is exactly the kind of levelling up community initiative that the funding was designed for. I encourage more projects to get in touch to apply for this kind of funding.”