Charities in Craster are forced to join forces

Oct 28 2009 by Brian Daniel, The Journal

CHARITIES in a coastal village in the North East have merged after growing numbers of second homes left the community with not enough people to run them.

Craster, in Northumberland, has seen an increase in second and holiday homes in recent years.

This has led to a fall in the village’s already small permanent population and the effects of this are now being felt by community groups and charities.

Bodies like Craster Community Development Trust, Craster Memorial Hall Committee and Craster Parish Council, which all also serve the neighbouring village of Dunstan, were all having to recruit volunteers from the same small pool of residents.

This led to the same names cropping up on the various bodies and operations for all the different groups were being made increasingly difficult.

Now two of the groups affected have taken steps to address the problem with the development trust and the hall committee merging to make best use of resources.

Michael Doherty, who is chairman of the newly-merged committees and also a parish councillor, said: “We have a lot of very good people in the two villages who have given a great deal of their time and effort to the memorial hall and to the development trust.

“However, times change and people age and move on.

“I am sure that we can use the time and effort of the available pool of volunteers more effectively if we can bring both charities into a single organisation.”