Bohemia Village Voice

Local sports centre in St Pauls Road - adheres to strict open to all policy.

Karen Manning, Dennis Richards plus a dedicated team of staff are keeping our local sports centre alive and well. Karen, 35, from Bohemia Road was made chief executive only a few weeks ago, and only a few months after joining the ‘Y’ as an admin assistant. Her three children, 7, 9 and 11 years old, all attend St Mary Star of the Sea school in Magdalen Road. 

She describes herself as ‘fair and approachable’, and wants to do lots of things for the ‘Y’ in the future. Such as? “Making the place look better, and updating our health and safety obligations. We’re starting a ‘Spin of the coin’ campaign this summer – this will emphasise our role in getting kids away from the temptations of the streets and into doing sports.” Although the ‘C’ in ‘YMCA’ means ‘Christian’ the ‘Y’ has an ‘open to all’ policy and a warm welcome is given to everyone whatever their religion, or background.

CHILDREN IN NEED

“We’ve just been awarded a £10,000 grant from ‘Awards for All’, which will mean we can refurbish our kitchen and set up an internet café, which we hope will be open by Sept/Oct,” said Karen. Who does the fund-raising? “One of our governors, Judith Monk, does nearly all our fund-raising – she does a fantastic job.

Just recently we received a £30,000 grant for new railings, a car park and closed circuit television. We’ve also been allocated money from the TV ‘Children in Need’ programme.”

NEW FLOOR

One of the schemes Karen is keen to get off the ground is to encourage local companies to support the installation of a much-needed new floor for the skating hall. “We’re hoping to get forty or so businesses to each contribute £500, so raising about £20,000.” The current floor is actually made of ceramic tiles (known confusingly as ‘granwood’ tiles, despite containing no actual wood) and if they were taken up and new ones re-laid the cost would be about £65,000. However, if the new floor is laid directly over the old one, with a thin foam rubber layer between the two, the cost would be more like £20,000 and would have the added advantage of being a ‘sprung’ floor – i.e. it would ‘give’ a little – ideal for badminton and similar sports.

DENNIS

The day-to-day running of the centre is done by Dennis Richards. Well-travelled, Bristol-born Dennis has a soft Canadian accent – “I spent 18 years from the age of 5 in Canada – and spent twenty years in Oz.” He’s lived for ten years in Hastings and has worked at the ‘Y’ for the last 2 years. Is he into sports? “Not really, although I do walk to work from central St Leonards each day.” Before coming to St Paul’s Road, Dennis was the book-keeper at St Mary in the Castle, now looks after the accounts at the ‘Y’. “We pay only a peppercorn rent to East Sussex County Council for the premises,” explained Dennis, “and there’s no council tax to pay, because we are a registered charity.

STAFF

Without these concessions and the grants from various sources, the ‘Y’ would have to close.” Who are the staff? “Apart from Karen and myself, there’s Michael, Sean, Leon, Adam, Bob, John, Holly, Tamzin, Caroline and Arthur.” How many work full-time? “None, even Karen and I only do 30 hours per week.” The centre is now an accredited training centre for the Open College Network which means that we can now run proper certificated courses – in woodwork and computer studies, for example.

“We have a very hardworking group of seven governors, all volunteers, chaired by Judith Monk,” said Dennis.” The board is very hardworking and ‘hands on’. We meet them twice a month at the ‘Y’.

Dennis explained that the centre has been very much used lately by local language schools. Parties of students from the Embassy,

IST and Cambridge Gardens College come to roller skate “Anywhere up to 90 or so can turn up at a time”, he said. Another local company, using the centre’s accommodation is STS. Why? “Their office used to be on Hastings Pier and when the pier closed, they were chucked off and needed emergency office premises – we were able to offer them our external classroom – at least until September.”