A SOUTH Shore church aspires to reach out to the community when a £700,000 new parish centre opens in a year's time.

St Christopher's C of E Church has received a £450,000 grant from the National Lottery and £250,000 from a mystery donor to start work in February on the centre at its Hawes Side Lane site.

A separate group, the Hawes Side Community Project, which had also been fund raising for its own community centre, decided to throw its support behind the St Christopher's scheme instead.

Welcoming the news, vicar Graham Rainford said: "The vision of the project is to create a new parish centre, equipped to provide high quality facilities in a safe, welcoming environment.

"We aim to meet the developing needs of local groups and organisations so that they will be more effective in serving people of all ages and conditions in the local community, thereby enhancing the quality of local community life."

Hawes Side councillor Pat Carrington said: "It's going to be a wonderful, multi-purpose building, with lots of space which will be very flexible in the way it can be used." She had been on the Hawes Side Community Project committee, but said: "Once we knew Fr Rainford had got this money we clearly realised there was no point in going on with ours - and he said everybody would be welcome to join in." The money they had raised will go towards buying equipment for the parish centre.

Blackpool Council chief executive Graham Essex-Crosby welcomed the centre as "a very real demonstration of joined-up thinking"- a base in the community where the council could extend services to the socially-excluded.

"Blackpool is one of the most deprived towns in the north west, and indeed in the UK," he explained. The centre would be a focus for local residents, businesses and organisations where no-one felt excluded.

Social services director Steve Pullen said the project had great potential, providing a venue for self-help groups for the disabled and their carers, community care work and family support to help children and their parents in need.

"Good quality, accessible buildings in the heart of the community are very rare," he said, "this centre will fill such a gap."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.