Today is a day to celebrate for us at the Greyfriars Charteris Centre for two specific reasons.
Firstly, today marks the 183rd anniversary of the birth of the inspiration behind our Centre - the very Revd Professor Archibald H Charteris - born this day in 1835. At our third annual carol concert the other evening we were once again blessed with the presence of his great great nephew - Lt Col John A Charteris MBE MC - along with his wife, daughter and grandchildren. It's great that the family link is being maintained as we continue the vision and work that Archibald started in our area from the late 1800's.
Secondly, those who are closely following our development plans will know we've had some procedural issues of late. But never mind that, because today we can announce that the City of Edinburgh Council have granted our planning permission. This is great news for us and will boost the remaining funding applications we have to submit. Thank you to everyone who took the time to support our planning application. Our funding target is around £2m and we've secured around £1.4m so far. So just a bit to go but this planning approval will certainly help our case going forwards. If you feel like helping in anyway then please get in touch. We also have the building warrant phase to get through but for now we celebrate an important milestone in our plans to make this amazing Centre work better for people now and in the future.
Our timeline currently points towards a July starting date for the 10-12 months of works, during which time we'll have considerably reduced availability. But we're working hard to secure alternative spaces for affected groups and will have more news on that in the new year. This is all part of us creating more community connections to maximise the spaces and services available for local people around our theme of Wellbeing and Enterprise.
So there is indeed plenty to celebrate! Thank you for being there on our journey and for the amazing support and encouragement we receive every day.
Our proposed new frontage
Our inspiration:
the very Revd Professor Archibald H Charteris