From CIC to charity… creating a new community hub

Something new for Woodbridge

Cordelia secured a voluntary position providing admin support at a community hall, and a couple of years on, crossed paths with a local councillor who suggested she came along to a meeting about an exciting new project.

A local youth centre had just been demolished, with a wide variety of community groups left without a meeting place as a consequence, amidst a backdrop of disconnection between generations and an increasing sense of cultural deprivation felt by young people. Woodbridge needed something new – and so, Jetty Lane was born.

From CIC to charity

Jetty Lane is now a charity (previously a CIC). It aims to provide a site for delivering creative opportunities to young people in the Suffolk coastal area and to bring the community together via arts, culture and wellbeing activities. Cordelia originally found out about CICs in 2015 when she was researching online. She was looking for a suitable structure for a Farmers’ Market which she subsequently set up in Woodbridge.

Following the demolition of Woodbridge Youth Centre in 2016, a group of community-minded people came together to save the site from development and reinstate a youth facility there. The County Council gave the group one year to come up with a viable Business Plan, and this meant that they needed to set up a suitable non-profit organisation as soon as possible. A CIC seemed to be the quickest and easiest option, and so it proved to be.

They were advised to transition to becoming a CIO by a firm of solicitors who initially helped us accounts. The thinking was that charities are considered more highly because there are far more rigorous requirements, and that they would struggle to find funders otherwise.