A Bristol community centre is now more accessible for elderly users and children, thanks to funding support worth £35,000 from waste management group Grundon.
The Lockleaze Youth and Play Space – known locally as The Vench – has a new entrance ramp, sunken trampoline, pizza oven and hot water system as a result of grants from Grundon to the centre’s management company Groundwork South. 
The funding, administered under the Landfill Communities Fund, has also paid for essential groundworks.
Grundon Bristol office operations manager John Phelps, pictured with Iulia Manolescu and Lisa Jimenez from The Vench, said the transformative effect of the funding at centre was already being seen.
“Our work aims to make the community centre safer and more financially and environmentally sustainable so that it can continue working to support children and young people in Lockleaze to live happy and healthy lives,” he added.
“The specific items requested in this project align with Grundon’s own social and environmental aims, to develop spaces and activities that help to improve deprived communities and bring tangible benefits to the environment.
“As a company, we have a longstanding relationship with Groundwork South having supported their projects around the South of England. 
“It’s good to be able to bring our support to Bristol and we look forward to helping other communities which can benefit from our relationship.”
The Vench manager for youth and play Lisa Jimenez, who has been involved in running it for more than 20 years, now brings her son to play at the centre that she enjoyed using as a girl.
“The trampoline’s so popular that we’ve had to set up a timing system so that everyone gets a go on it,” she said.
“Because it’s sunk into the ground it’s accessible for all the children, including those with disabilities, so it’s a great addition.”
She said The Vench was massively important to the community.
“We’re in the process of planning our 50th birthday and we have people in their 60s and 70s coming here who say they used the centre when they were much younger,” she added.
“For the youngsters it’s a great place for confidence building, for understanding and taking acceptable risks, for making friends, for building relationships with staff they can trust if they don’t feel confident going anywhere else, and us just being able to keep an extra eye on this children who might need some additional support. 
“We’re even getting some interest from the children in how the centre is run and financed, so it’s an opportunity to provide some early business education as well.”
She said while it had changed massively over the years, the core function was still the same – community cohesion and a place for young people to find their confidence in life.
“Without the funding we receive from local organisations, businesses and income from our own space, the centre couldn’t even exist,” she added.
The Vench operations manager Iulia Manolescu said the centre was incredibly grateful to Grundon Waste Management for its support.
“We have a thriving, passionate team here but securing funding is competitive and hard work, so we can’t thank Grundon enough for their help,” she said
“In practice, the new hot water tank will have a huge impact on our energy bills and the speed with which we can manage the kitchen, and the pizza oven is a lovely addition.
“Most important, however, is the new accessibility ramp at the front, which gives our elderly and disabled visitors the confidence to come in and benefit from our food club, which played such as massive role during Covid and continues to help local people during the cost of living crisis.”
The Landfill Communities Fund (LCF) is a tax credit scheme that enables landfill operators to contribute money to community organisations based on every tonne of waste that they dispose of at their sites.
In this way it ‘offsets’ some of the negative impacts of living near a landfill site for affected communities.
Grundon, which was founded in 1929, has reduced its carbon emissions by 78.68% since 2000 through a series of measures, including an ongoing energy self-sufficiency programme and investment in state-of-the-art technologies.
The firm works with customers across the South of England to provide a total waste management service for the reduction, reuse, recycling, recovering and disposal of waste.
