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Volunteers' £90k boost
AFTER TWO difficult years, including cut-backs, New Mills and District Volunteer Centre staff and volunteers are celebrating an award of £90,147 from the Big Lottery Fund.
The grant from BIG's Reaching Communities programme will enable NMVC to continue and improve its work in providing transport assistance to housebound people living in the New Mills area.
Dorothy Scapens, Centre Manager, said of the five-year grant: "We are absolutely delighted. There are very few grants available for that length of time. I think the lottery have take notice of the feedback from organisations such as ourselves that said three years was very nice but longer would be better. This is absolutely as good as it gets."
The Centre have also been boosted by funding from Lloyds TSB and now hope to get back to where they were after previous funding came to an end and they were forced to make cuts including redundancies and a reduction in opening hours.
The Lottery grant means the group can appoint a Transport Co-ordinator to help improve and expand their transport scheme. They also hope to be able to re-open the Centre on Fridays.
The service, which has been going for more than 25 years, helps people with mobility difficulties attend outpatient appointments at hospital. The car scheme also offers days out, weekly trips, do-or-to-door pick-up services and shopping trips for housebound people.
Mick McGrath, Big Lottery Fund Head of Region for the East Midlands, said: "This Lottery grant means that more housebound people living in rural locations will be offered a vital service to get them to medical appointments or to the shops, things that many of us take for granted."
* Buxton Junior Football club are also celebrating after being awarded a grant of 4,084 from the Lottery's Awards for All programme.
The grant is one of 21 made across the East Midlands region in the latest round of awards.
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Weather for Buxton
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -3 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Light sleet
Temperature: 1 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South west
