PROJECT Gateway blog - MARCH 2025
WORK BEGINS…
It’s happening! We’ve moved out of the building, the keys were handed over to our building contractor Ash on the 24th March 2025, church is continuing offsite and work has started!
Find out more below…
The Big Move
Moving everything out of church was a huge undertaking. Instead of using a removal firm, we were able to move our whole church contents with the help of wonderful church family members. We started packing on the 1st March and moved everything across to our storage by the end of Saturday 22nd March. The staff worked hard weeding through all the ‘stuff’ accumulated over the years, and volunteers came to help pack, take things to the tip / charity and eventually, we lifted and shifted everything out.
HUGE thanks go to everyone who helped us through this month - we literally could not have done it without you.
Work starts
Ash arrived on Monday the 24th March 2025 and work started…
Hoardings have gone up around the church to keep the site safe and posters will be added shortly so everyone knows what is going on.
The first job Ash are undertaking is to strip out the systems to be updated… There’s lots of activity in every room uncovering and demolishing…. Here are some photos from the first couple of weeks…
And here’s a reminder of what our new Youth and Community Centre will look like when it’s finished mid 2026…
Finance update
It has been a positive month on the fundraising front. We were delighted to learn that we ‘ve been awarded 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.
We have also been working hard to keep the project build cost to around £4m + VAT. We had been expecting to be able to reclaim almost ALL of the VAT on the project back from the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme (LPoWGS). However, the government unexpectedly announced the scaling back of the scheme, to take effect on 1st April this year. This means that, instead of being able to claim back around £750k of VAT, we may only be able to claim back around £400k (via the now capped LPoWGS, and through the church registering for VAT). This means we still have a bit more money to raise than we’d hoped.
Overall, this means our financial position is still GOOD. We have raised around £4.3m in gifts, pledges, grants and interest, and we are around £750k short of our target. We have had approval for up to £600k mortgage on 4 Orchard Drive (the house we own), and we will have a Gift Day in October 2025 to raise as much of the final £750k as we can so that any mortgage we take out will be as small as possible.
Contract matters
We have extended our period of detailed contract negotiation, assisted by our project management partner Ridge, because we need to work out some technical tweaks and finalise the contract sum, which is looking like it will be exactly within our planned budget.
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.