The Role Of Alverstoke Parish Centre

As well as being home to many local groups, the Parish Centre provides a welcome break for refreshments during the annual Michaelmas Fayre, Christmas Tree Festival, and Alverstoke Garden Walkabout. These three events alone will see around 4500 people make use of the facilities. Each day people call in asking for directions or information, or to use the toilet.

St Mary's Parish Centre was built in 1968 to provide an administrative centre for the Parish and a community space for residents. Funds to build it were raised locally by the church and community. Over the past 60 years it has become the centre of community life in this ever-growing area. It is home to a wide range of community groups and church–led groups.

The Centre had to close during Covid, but groups have been returning. There are fourteen groups with weekly bookings, nine with monthly bookings, and seven with annual bookings. In addition to those, there are two weekly and two monthly church-led groups.

Other users include fundraising events (usually two per month), private parties, weddings, wakes, business meetings and training courses.

It hosts coffee mornings, birthday parties, dances, quizzes, tea parties, lunches, beetle drives, bridge drives, Sea Shanty suppers, wedding receptions, wakes, model railway exhibitions, floral demonstrations, quilting, the Gosport Allotments’ annual horticultural show.

It acts as a changing room for concerts in the church, a refreshment room for the annual Michaelmas Fayre and the Garden Walkabout, a meeting place and social space for three Women's Institutes, a play-space for toddlers, an exercise space for pilates, chair yoga, tai-chi, and chair exercise.

The annual footfall for 2024 is calculated at just under 24,000.

The parish centre is where the business of the Parish is carried out, and it is here that the pastoral staff hold wedding preparation classes, pre–Christening meetings with parents and Godparents, discussions for funeral service arrangements, Alpha courses, bereavement and fellowship meetings.

The parish centre is the emergency evacuation site for local nursing homes and has applied as a Rest refuge for emergencies – an essential service provided for residents whose homes were flooded.

Strategies for overcoming increasing levels of poor mental health during the Pandemic have become the focus for local and national government. It is now recognised that community spaces, conversations, and social interaction are essential to maintaining a healthy mind and life.

The Parish Centre has been delivering on these objectives for over 50 years and will continue to build on this performance when we can provide safe, fully accessible, energy–efficient buildings for use by all sectors of the community.

Gosport Borough Council are committed to providing good quality community spaces as stated in their Local Plan 2011–2029. This plan sets out the Gosport Borough Council's commitment to provide and promote a range of quality community and leisure facilities in easily accessible locations for residents, workers and visitors. Such facilities include ... Community Halls

https://www.gosport.gov.uk/article/1292/Local-Plan-2011-2029-Adopted-October-2015

This extract is from Paragraph LP32 – Community Spaces – Key local issues are – '... to help alleviate health deprivation issues.' '... need to increase participation in leisure and cultural activities to improve physical and mental well–being.'