A Huddersfield charity which helps thousands of people is appealing for support after a run of bad luck.

Time Together, which is also known as The Denby Dale Centre, suffered a severe flood at its charity shop and its three minibuses broke down … all in the same week.

The charity shop remains closed after the flood at the Springfield Mill Centre in Denby Dale where it’s based and the charity is liaising with insurers but any payout won’t cover the whole cost.

The charity – which has eight staff and more than 100 volunteers – is run by chief officer Paul Jones who said the flood damage came out of the blue with a cloudburst over Denby Dale in June.

“So much water came down so quickly all the roads were flooded and there was simply too much water for the drainage system to cope,” he said. “Water just poured through the door and flooded the centre, affecting around half of the business tenants in there and some are still closed.

“We’ve had to dispose of carpets and fittings but luckily have been able to store our undamaged stock in a dry room in another part of the centre for now.

“The shop remains closed while it continues to dry out and then it will need repairs.”

The charity rents out its three minibuses to around 50 other charities and community groups and a fuel mishap has caused £8,000 in damage to one of the engines but, hopefully, some of this may be recouped from insurance.

Another bus suffered an electric door mechanism failure which has cost £2,500 to repair while the third had a battery problem.

 

 

Paul said: “It was just one of those weeks where I just held my head in my hands as things went from bad to worse. We are very much at the heart of the community with our buses used right across Kirklees so we are appealing for people to help us wherever they can and we’ve set up a gofundme appeal.”

The charity’s main aim is to help people living in loneliness and isolation and provided phenomenal support across Kirklees during the pandemic with Paul leading a team that provided 12 services in rural Kirklees including a shopping service, prescription delivery, dog walking, chatterbox phone buddies, a volunteer car service, three food fund projects, volunteering, a distance learning training centre and a customer phone line.

Paul, 54, of Salendine Nook, received an MBE for his work with the charity during the pandemic.

Time Together now runs 30 projects and carries out what it describes as 3,000 ‘acts of connection’ every month. A connection is every time it provides a service for someone so it could be they may be attending one of its three dementia groups, going to a cream tea session or using one of its bus services.

Paul adds: “We run activities every day of the week so we are a very busy charity.”

 

 

The charity costs £250,000 a year to run with the money coming in from people’s contributions towards the sessions they have, grant applications and fundraising. The charity has to find around three-quarters of the money it needs itself.

Some money is received from Kirklees Council for its work called Community Anchor where it helps and supports small, fledgling charities and community groups which it has done with a rural group for veterans that has gone on to become an independent charity with 40 members.

A bit more funding comes from the NHS for Time Together’s Community Champions scheme where people talk to others about medical issues in a non-clinical way and these have included the importance of smear tests and diabetes with another about cancer coming up.

Paul says the charity’s work is absolutely vital.

“Our whole ethos is about connecting people,” he said. “Socialising is so good for people’s mental and physical well-being and that’s what we are about with all our projects. The cream tea sessions we hold, for example, are all about chatting and laughing together.”

Time Together’s main services are activities and transport. Activities include dementia groups, a film and food group in Kirkburton, a Grief Café for people struggling to cope after a bereavement, a luncheon club and cream teas.

The transport section includes shopping trips to supermarkets for people in rural areas, a car service operated by volunteers and the chance for other community groups and charities across Kirklees to hire their minibuses.

Time Together also helps people in need with its Community Pantry, now helping well over 100 households and operating like a discount grocery shop.

To donate to support Time Together go to https://gofund.me/a82e4914

For more on the charity and all the services it offers go to https://www.ddc.org.uk/

Written by ANDY HIRST who runs his own Yorkshire freelance journalism agency AH! PR (https://ah-pr.com/) specialising in press releases, blogging, website content and copywriting.