Helping Counselling in the Community reopen South Shore hub

Between fire and storm damage, Waterloo Road has been dealt some devastating blows in the last 12 months – making an already struggling area even worse off.

Now I’m pleased to announce that Counselling In The Community (CITC) has been allocated funding from the Pride in Place Impact Fund to complete urgent repair work and to allow Blackpool Council to purchase the building. This decision, agreed between myself and the council leader, and funded with money I secured from the government, will ensure a long-term future for the charity which provides vital, affordable and accessible mental health support to residents.

£40,000 is being handed to the charity to complete urgent repair works to its building on Waterloo Road while £100,000 is being put up to purchase the premises – making this a true community owned and led asset. This is exactly the kind of project the Pride of Place Impact Fund is designed to fund – with visible improvements to the high street alongside a meaningful contribution to the community in the form of mental health support.

The charity was forced to close its hub in late October after storms caused extensive damage to the building, leaving more than 100 people at risk of no access to their therapy sessions.

Now it is set to reopen again before summer, thanks to this investment from our Labour government. The Waterloo Road centre had already invested in creating a new sensory room which I’d enjoyed taking my son Cillian to before it was forced to close. Alongside reopening the existing provision, the investment will improve accessibility in the building and add two extra counselling suites.

I visited Stuart Hutton-Brown, CEO and Founder of CITC, at site on Waterloo Road. He says that without this money, he wouldn’t have been able to open our Waterloo Hub again – storm damage meant water ingress had seriously damaged ceilings, walls and floors.

CITC’s professional counsellors provide accessible and free of affordable mental health support to the community. I’ve spoken about its model several times in Parliament, and told the heath secretary directly that I believe it should be used more widely to plug the gap in mental health services. Private companies are often used to plug the gap in NHS provision but charities like CITC give us far more bang for our buck and truly know the communities they work in.

Without the South Shore hub, 100 or so people would likely end up at their GPs, in A&E or worse – without any support at all.

CITC is just one of the first to benefit from the Pride in Place Impact Fund – £1.5m we have been handed to make immediate improvements to shared spaces, high streets and the public realm. In recent weeks we invested in Tramtown and more projects will soon be announced, including others at South Shore.