Kedington Community Centre, near Haverhill, takes big step forward with expansion thumbs up

A village’s 50-year-old community centre can look forward to an even brighter future after plans to almost double it in size were approved by a district council.

Kedington Community Centre, in Arms Lane, can now add a new sports pavilion, with its own entrance, and a second hall, as well as build a small additional room to use for storage, after the extension plans were approved by West Suffolk Council.

The planning application was submitted by the Kedington Community Association (KCA), which manages the centre and the neighbouring Great Meadow.

The KCA held a weekend of events in late February to celebrate 50 years of the centre being open.

Derek Raine, KCA chairman, said the extension – for which funding opportunities are now being explored – will bring many benefits.

“The centre was supposed to have a second hall and it wasn’t built for financial reasons, so in a sense we are going back to something like the original plan, except the original didn’t have the sports pavilion or the changing rooms.

“The important bit about the changing rooms is that we can separate the toilets for the sports people from the main hall, which has always been a problem.”

The new sports pavilion will also have showering facilities and changing rooms, including for female match officials and players.

Mr Raine added: “We will be building the sports pavilion first and hopefully get some income from that which will enable us to move on build the hall extension.”

It is hoped that work can begin on the sports hall within the next two years, explained Mr Raine.

He added: “We will have something that looks really smart, looking out onto the meadow (which is not currently the case) so I am anticipating that a lot more people will want to come and hire it for get togethers, conferences and parties and so on, both for the villagers and outsiders, and than can generate the income.

“As village halls go I’m told that we have a very respectable occupancy rate. I think we will be able to have more.”

The main hall is used by many community groups, clubs and organisations and for private functions, productions put on by the Ketton Players, music events and hosts a weekly café and a warm hub in winter.