To all club members,

After months of work I am delighted to be able to bring you up to date on moving forward with finishing off the clubhouse extension, redecoration and the financing required to do so.

Huge thanks are due to Mike Powderly who has led the current grant application process, ably assisted by Terry Sullivan. This evolution has taken 7 months to bring to fruition with 23 requests from the council for more additional information

As a result we have now received the first grant offer from Wealden to assist with finishing off the changing rooms, refs and physio rooms and showers. This grant is just under £45,000 and is on the basis of matched funding from the club.

The committee has now received offers of donations from a local charity of £10,000 and a corporate offer of a donation of a further £20,000, making an initial £30,000 towards matching the grant and leaving the club as a whole to try to raise the balance of £15,000. We hope that with support from all sections this can be achieved quite quickly and the work to complete these areas plus , we hope, some work on improving the club room ( flooring, new doors etc) can go ahead straight away.

Donations can be made to the club account ( please specify clubhouse donation) or to the Crowd funding site which will be shown on the web site. Any amount will be a great help and our sponsors ( mentioned above) are keen to see the club pulling together to raise these funds.

Lloyds Bank,
Sort Code 30 –95-01
Account number - 01763783
Account name - Heathfield and Waldron Rugby Football Club.

I have attached the plan and Terry’s initial suggestion, coloured in, of where the work can now go ahead with a current budget of around £90,000.

• Correct door opening
• Complete Changing Room 4
• Complete Changing Room 3
• Complete Ref room 1 -Physio
• Complete Ref room 2
• Complete corridor
• Clubroom flooring and doors

Once the funds are in and work and costings agreed, we can provide more detail.

We are also working on a further grant from Wealden, CLIF (Community & Leisure Infrastructure Fund) which is for Community facilities. This is a larger fund and the matched funding is 80% from the grant matched by 20% from the club. For this reason we need to leave the break through of the club room, up dated Bar and Kitchen, ( essentially providing potential community facilities) until this appeal has gone in and been approved, as they won’t fund work that has already been started. We hope to get the application in very shortly but have been advised that they are currently working on a 3-4 month turnaround.

I am sure that you will all agree that this is great news for the club and thanks are due to many members who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes ( as well as having a day job!) to pull this all together.

Robin Gale - President
The HWRFC Committee