Help Pettypool Girlguides raise £1.4million (From Northwich Guardian)

Help Pettypool Girlguides raise £1.4million

10:30am Tuesday 31st January 2012 in News By Gina Bebbington

A WOODLAND hideaway used by girls from across Cheshire is struggling for funding because of its posh postcode.

Girlguiding Cheshire Forest is appealing to the community to help it raise the £1.4 million needed to bring its 31-year-old lodge at Pettypool Activity Centre, in Sandiway, into the 21st century.

Frances Cogger, a former chairman of the Pettypool committee, said: “We’ve failed on Lottery grants because we’ve got the wrong postcode.

“People think leafy Cheshire doesn’t need it but this facility is available to kids from Middlewich, Northwich, Winsford, Tarporley, Chester, Lymm, Warrington, Widnes, Runcorn, Frodsham and Helsby – there’s something like 10,000 girls in Cheshire Forest.

“These youngsters need somewhere like this – they need to have safety and a way of expressing themselves, they need to be adventurous and need to learn how to live with other people and all of that happens here.”

Pettypool Activity Centre, which is used almost every weekend of the year, is set in 17 acres of woodland which Girlguiding Cheshire Forest has built up over the years.

The group began by renting five acres from former owners ICI and clearing undergrowth to make five camp sites.

Over the years they bought the land and were given the option to extend it to the current acreage.

The existing pre-fabricated lodge building was constructed in 1980 to house a small number of girls and leaders and was extended during the following 15 years to include space for 24 girls and six leaders, as well as a meeting area and the county office.

Frances, known to many as Blod, said while the group was pleased and proud with what it has built up at Pettypool, the building itself was desperately in need of an upgrade to meet current and future requirements.

“The facilities are not what we would want for youngsters these days,” she said.

“We need something more modern, where we can have smaller units instead of 24 to a dormitory.

“Because the fabric of the current building isn’t as good as it could be there are often repairs that need doing and it’s just not the quality we want to give to the youngsters.”

The committee carried out a feasibility study and consulted with the youngsters before deciding that the best option was to rebuild and a tree house design has been chosen.

• Girlguiding Cheshire Forest has a number of ways people can help with fundraising. These include a Buy a Brick appeal, selling Pettypool fundraising badges and a Pettypool 200 Club. The group is also registered with easyfundraising so that anyone who shops on the internet can register at easyfundraising.org.uk and select Girlguiding Cheshire Forest Pettypool as their chosen charity. For more information visit pettypool.org.