BURY'S Fairfield Owl Club has swooped to claim a vital grant worth £5,850.

And the money will be used to create a series of places for its after-school project.

The cash award has been given by the National Lottery board's New Opportunities Fund, and the Bury hand-out is just one of many distributed within the region - the North West has received grants totalling £1,882,224!

Thanks to the windfall, more than 2,440 new childcare places are to be created, with £1,072,204 allocated specifically to local childcare schemes.

Another £810,020 is to benefit the out-of-hours learning projects at 40 schools. Good news for Bury is that the Fairfield Owl Club, which is based at the town's Fairfield CP School, will now be able to set up 24 before and 24 after-school places.

This will cater for youngsters aged between four and 11 years.

Officials at the club are delighted with the news.

Fairfield's head teacher, Mr Christopher Ashley, said: "We are extremely grateful for this award because it is important that we establish a quality service so that people will want to use it."

He added: "The better the service, the greater will be the demand, and this will lead to its long term sustainability."

The New Opportunities Fund distributes National Lottery money to health, education and environment projects across the UK.

The out-of-school-hours learning project was launched in April last year and is available to create and develop regular activities. A total of £205 million has been set aside to fund such schemes.

And a further £220 million is available under the initiative to create new learning places for 865,000 children across the UK.

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