{"id":269378,"date":"2025-07-17T13:11:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T13:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/269378\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T13:11:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T13:11:14","slug":"southend-youth-club-gutted-after-1-2m-grant-is-taken-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/269378\/","title":{"rendered":"Southend: Youth club &#8216;gutted&#8217; after \u00a31.2m grant is taken away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A grant of \u00a31.4m to demolish the building and construct a new one was secured by EGBC from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport as part of its Youth Investment Fund.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">EGBC said around \u00a3200,000 of the money had already been spent on preparatory work and surveys. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After its initial contractor pulled out of the project, it found a new one who was &#8220;ready to go&#8221; when it heard the rest of the funding was being withdrawn.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jay Solder, deputy county director of EGBC, admitted there was a &#8220;slight shortfall&#8221; between the grant and actual cost of the build, but his organisation had enough funds to cover it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But that wasn&#8217;t enough for SIB to deem the project worthy of continuing,&#8221; he told the BBC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I just couldn&#8217;t believe that we&#8217;d invested so much time into a project, to get it so close that everyone was ready to get working &#8211; for them to still say &#8216;no&#8217;, it was gutting really.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">John Plummer, treasurer of both the Lifstan Boys Club and Southend Amateur Boxing Club, said he feared the two clubs would &#8220;become extinct&#8221; without a new building.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think that&#8217;s disgraceful that it could happen,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I hope we find a solution but I can&#8217;t see one in the near future.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A grant of \u00a31.4m to demolish the building and construct a new one was secured by EGBC from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-269378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114868747354893185","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}