Hedon Community and Sports Groups benefit from Yorkshire Water Community Fund

COMMUNITY AND SPORTS GROUPS from Hedon will be amongst those receiving cheques from the Yorkshire Water Community Fund on Friday 7th December 2012.

• St Augustine’s Church restoration fundraisers will receive one of the biggest cheques with a maximum £5,000 being awarded for the 800 year old church’s restoration funds.
• Hedon Rangers AFC football teams will get cheques totalling £3,100 for three different projects to refurbish their toilets and to provide equipment and kit for the under-eights and under-tens teams.
• Hedon Youth Group will get a cheque of £500 towards equipment.
• Hedon Methodist Youth Club will also get £500 towards music equipment.
• Hedon Museum Society will get a donation of £500 to support their efforts to promote their free services to the wider community.
• Another project awarded the full amount is expected to have a big impact on flooding risk in Hedon and surrounding villages. Keyingham Level Drainage Board applied for and will receive £5,000 towards larger £160,000 plans to dredge local drains and clear out the mouth and outfall of Hedon Haven.

Yorkshire Water and the Funding Committee had been overwhelmed by the amounts requested from applicants. Over 70 applications had been received requesting grants totaling in excess of £190,000 between them! In light of this massive response, a decision was made by the Funding Committee to allocate the entire funding available from this fund – £50,000 (rather than £25,000 this year and next year as originally planned).

In addition to the eight projects mentioned above, another twenty-three projects from the South West Holderness and East Hull areas received support from Yorkshire Water’s Community Fund. A list of all those projects receiving support is included on HU12 Online.

Not all applicants were happy with the results. One Preston project which was in the immediate vicinity of the Waste Water Treatment Works had its work severely affected by the appalling smells emanating from the Saltend site, particularly in Summer 2011. Following dismay at not been awarded a grant, its Manager said: “We seem to be the only applicant that havent received any funding, priority has been given to organisations as far away as Keyingham. This I find infuriating as we were right next door to it (the sewage works) unlike everyone else!”

Councillor Mike Bryan was the Chairman of the Fund Committee that made the awards on behalf of Yorkshire Water. He said:

“I would like to thank Yorkshire water for their generosity in gifting the £50,000 for a wide range of projects that will benefit the residents in our area .

31 projects in total have been selected by the funding committee. The funding committee has rigorously scrutinised every application, not once, but many times over. I would like to thank the committee for all their hard work put in to this.

The funding was created as a result of local complaints about smells. Yorkshire water have recently invested £4m pounds into their water treatment plant at saltend to dramatically reduce the smells.

Yorkshire Water did not have to give any money to this area, but they have, and I am very grateful that they did.

Congratulations to all the successful applicants.” – Chairman of the fund committee Councillor Mike Bryan

The cheques will be presented at an event to be held at South Holderness Technology College on Friday.