The plans of the Shrewsbury & Newport canals Trust to restore the warehouses and basin at Wappenshall are in crisis. The total projected cost of the project is £1.5 million and the Heritage Lottery Fund grant will contribute £1 million towards this, leaving the Trust with another £500,000 to find.
The Trust writes:
So far we have managed to raise £70,000 from other sources and a direct appeal to our members has added a further £20,000 of pledged funds, with more coming in every day. A copy of our Pledge Form is attached.
Our fundraising team has studied over 200 grant-funding bodies to check eligibility and applications have been made to over 100 of these, but so far with little return. One major grant of £100,000 we were advised to bid for to a local authority and assured would be successful has been turned down.
So, what can we do? We are still pursuing other funding sources and, as mentioned above, we have appealed to our 1250 members to pledge their support – if even half of them pledge something, this will make a significant dent in the amount we need to raise.
We have a deadline later in 2015 to raise the full amount of match funding needed, but if we do not reach our target by then, the pledges will not be called in, so members will know that if they make a pledge and we do call it in, the fund raising has been successful.
It is important to realize that there is now a real possibility that the Wappenshall project will be deferred by the HLF, so if anyone has any idea where we can obtain the match funding required, do please contact Bernie Jones, our Chairman, details are on our website http://www.sncanal.org.uk or call 07971 016322.
So far we have had an HLF Round 1 payment of £72,000 to pay for all the preparatory work required and we have to then apply for the balance of their £1million grant. The plans are all now in place and our HLF monitor believes we are ready to apply for the balance but, because of the funding shortfall, we have had to put off making this application. We cannot apply for the balance of the HLF funds until we have the rest of the money in place and, if we do not have this money in time, the HLF grant will be deferred.
For further information contact: John Myers, Tel 01785 255263, Mobile 07711 858986, Email [email protected]
Information from Shrewsbury and Newport Canal Trust. Photo by Tony Lewery, see his 2011 ‘Off the Mainline’ report about ‘Wonderful Wappenshall’.
