PROJECT Gateway blog - FEBRUARY 2025
COUNTING DOWN TO HANDOVER DAY…
We’re counting down the days to handing over the church to our building contractor for them to start work on the 24th March 2025! BUT although the building will be closed, church will very much continue! We'd love you to join us in worship at our temporary homes. Find out more below…
Where are we going?
Below is a quick summary; for full details of what will be happening, where and when, plus Frequently Asked Questions, click here.
Sunday 10:30 am services
Starting 23rd March 2025
Nova Cinema, Screen 1 - Peacocks Centre (entrance on the top floor - Level 1), Woking. GU21 6GQ
Children - Children will join in the usual opening time of worship, before being taken to their groups.
Youth - Youth will meet at 10.30am in the cinema lobby and then walk down together to their group.
Sunday 6:30 pm services
Starting 23rd March 2025
St Andrew’s Church, Goldsworth Park - Denton Way, Woking. GU21 3LG
C4 Ignite Youth - The C4 Ignite group will meet at St Andrew's, at 5.30pm before the evening service.
Midweek Meetings
The youth and kids’ midweek hubs will continue to meet as usual on their usual days, details coming soon.
Bookshop & Café
The final day of trading for the bookshop and café will be the 1st March 2025 as both spaces will then be closed for refurbishment. They plan to reopen end of September / beginning of October 2025.
Can you help?
We have lots of ways you can help:
Packing up church (1st to the 23rd March),
Sunday mornings - set up & pack down, chaperoning children, lobby stewards
Sunday evenings - set up & pack down, transport, welcome and many more
To offer help, please click here and fill in the form to tell us what you’d like to do.
Costs and fundraising update
As we begin construction we still need to focus on the cost of the project and fundraising. There is still a gap between the estimated cost of the project (around £5m) and how much we have raised (just under £4m) and there are several ways we are seeking to close this gap.
Firstly, we are undertaking a thorough Value Engineering exercise, aiming to reduce the costs of the project across the board (e.g. by sourcing cheaper materials, adjusting the designs etc.). Secondly, we are applying for a Community Infrastructure Grant from Woking Council for £200k towards the cost of the Youth and Community Centre, from ring fenced money for work with a community benefit. Thirdly, we have approval for a mortgage on 4 Orchard Drive. Finally, we hope to be able to recover a substantial amount of VAT on the project from the Listed Places of Worship Scheme (LPWS).
HOWEVER, this last option may prove more challenging than expected as the government have just announced a drastic scaling back of the scheme, meaning we'd only be able to claim back much less of the VAT we had hoped. We were always planning a focused time of fundraising once the project began, but if changes to LPWS do affect our project we will need to close a much larger gap than hoped. PLEASE PRAY that our fundraising, grant application, and government lobbying efforts are successful.
Contract matters
We continue our 10 week period of detailed contract negotiation, assisted by our project management partner Ridge, before we sign the contract and hand over the building to our chosen contractor.
Find out more
If you want more information about the project, or to find out how you can support it financially, take a look at our Gateway pages on ChristChurch’s website, or you can chat to any of the members of the team: Adrian Beavis (Vicar), Steve Roberts (Project Leader), Walter Coxon (Finance), Mike Pearce (Technical), Peter Wichmann (CCW building knowledge and expertise), Rachael Purvis (Project Coordinator). If you’d like to email us with a specific query you can do so at this email address: gateway@ccwoking.org.