Dear Parents, Friends, and Families,

I’m Paul Casey, Chair of Trustees for Church Riverside Scout Group and I’m thrilled
to share this third end-of-month update with you, giving details about the hut flood
and subsequent rebuild project. Firstly, and most importantly, I’d like to express my
heartfelt gratitude for all your help and support with the rebuild of our Scout Hut.

 

The project team has been busy applying for more grants. In total, we’ve targeted
116 different funding bodies. We’re starting to receive responses now; sadly, the
vast majority have advised that we don’t fit their funding criteria. However, we have
had a few positive outcomes. Here is a summary of the main activities:

Following our meeting with the District Scout Trustee Board, they have generously
pledged £10,000 towards our project once we break ground, with an additional
£5,000 upon reaching our initial fundraising target of £200,000. They said that
they were truly impressed by the progress we've made so far.

We also successfully secured a £5,000 grant from the Foyle Foundation. The Foyle
Foundation was formed to implement the will of the late Christina Foyle. She was
the daughter of William Foyle who, with his brother, founded the former family-
owned bookshop Foyles in Charing Cross Road, London. We are very lucky to have
been accepted by the Foyle Foundation for this grant.

We are incredibly fortunate to have the backing of our local ward councilors and
thanks to the efforts of Cllr Emma Holland-Lindsey, who has led the charge, we
have now secured financial support from seven other local ward councilors (Cllr
David Bligh, Cllr Nigel Carnell, Cllr Russ Goodchild, Cllr Chris Leaman, Cllr Kevin
Pughe, Cllr Shaun Roberts and Cllr John Baker) with the grants totaling £7,350.
Our thanks go out to all of our ward councilors for their support.

 

In December a few of the team spent an evening with Santa, fundraising for the
Rotary Club. They have just awarded us £350 towards our goal, so thank you
Santa for that donation!

 

Additionally, the County Scout Association Trustees will be reviewing our request
for assistance this coming weekend. Sadly, we have not made it through to DIY
SOS and | will be chasing up support from both Barratt and Bellway Homes.

 

Fingers crossed for even more positive news in next month’s update!

 

Fundraising:

We are now entering the fundraising phase, kicking off with a bucket shake at the
Leighton Linslade Football Club on Saturday, 1s: March. We hope to follow this
with a similar event at Asda in Dunstable. We're also reaching out to local
businesses and all of the Leighton Buzzard supermarkets for their support.

Furthermore, please scan the QR link, it will raise free donations for Church
Riverside Scout Group every time you shop online. Over 8,000 retailers, including
big names like Sainsbury's, M&S, Argos, and Just Eat, are ready to donate at no
extra cost to you. Every donation helps us immensely! If you have any fundraising
ideas, please drop me a line at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

 

We have now commissioned an architect, Graham Rosser from RM Architectural
Consultants Ltd. Graham was a former Church Riverside cub and has kindly agreed
to work at cost. This month we’ve initiated soil surveys and a flood risk assessment;
these are reports that are required by the local authority planning department to
ensure the new hut will be flood-resilient. We have shortlisted three suppliers for
the building and expect to make a final decision shortly once they have submitted
final quotes based on the architect’s plans.

 

The project team also attended the flood meeting held by the Environment Agency
at Astral Park to see if there was any further support we could get from those
organisations. Although there was a lot of useful information, there was no offer of
compensation or financial support.

 

Our key date for opening the doors to the new hut remains 1st June 2025 and we
will continue to strive towards that target date

 

Target:

With all the generous donations, grants, fundraising activities and pledges we have
now raised £197,057. This leaves us with £52,943 left to raise to reach our target
of £250,000. In my end-of-January update, I mentioned we were at 72% of the
target. I’m pleased to confirm we are now 79%. Thank you so much for your
continued help and support.

As you can see from the update above, we have made huge strides in the past few
months towards our target and | strongly believe it is no longer a dream, it is
achievable! Please, if you can help in any way, let one of the project team or me
know, we would love to have you on board.

 

 

 

Paul Casey
Chair of Trustees
Church Riverside Scout Group 

 

28th February 2025