Barrow Community Basketball and Sports Association Ltd is the “official” title of the facility more widely known as Hoops Basketball Centre. As the name suggests, Hoops is far more than just a basketball centre. It has existed since 1998, constructed with a grant from the National Lottery and has been widely used as a community resource since then.
Hoops operates under the supervision of a Board of Trustees who are all local people connected in some way, to the different groups who use the facility. They are all volunteers.
Hoops is a self-sustaining viable business, the home of Barrow Thorns Junior Basketball Club, used for a regular netball league, adult basketball league, groups for children and adults with physical impairment or learning difficulties, a winter indoor training venue for local football, athletic and rugby clubs, Pilates and fitness sessions for adult ladies and by local primary schools for tennis coaching. The centre has also hosted one off events such as MMA, Boxing, Wacky World and Nerf Wars in the last 12 months and has been used as a rehearsal venue for a local dance school preparing for a show. We provide a venue for kids birthday parties and part of the building has been let to the NHS since 2021 ,used as a valuable resource for patients with chronic breathing complaints. We currently welcome over 180 children from year 1 to year 11 for basketball practice on Fridays and Saturday. Hoops is truly a community facility with a rich variety of sports and activities going on there regularly.
The land Hoops is built on and the former school playground used as a car park are owned by Cumbria County Council. Both are leased to Hoops with 27 years remaining on the lease. Cumbria County Council has decided to sell the land leased to us and further land around us, at auction on 17th November 2021.
There is no immediate threat to Hoops, we have the remainder of the lease. But we are concerned that the most likely purchaser of the land at auction would be a developer hoping to fill the available space with housing. Whilst any potential development could currently only go on around us, once the land is gone there is no going back. At the expiry of our lease, our future would be uncertain.
What happens in 27 years’ time is unlikely to affect the current trustees, but we all feel a moral obligation to do whatever we can to secure the long term future of Hoops for generations of local sports people and to maintain the land around it for sport and recreation. The best way for us to do that is to try and purchase the land at auction. As the land owners, we would have control over the land and what is or isn’t built upon it. It secures the building for many years to come and provides the opportunity to develop it for further sporting use in the future.
We cannot do this alone, we simply do not have the resources. So we find ourselves turning to you, the community, for help through this Crowdfunding campaign. Together, we believe it is possible.
Any funding raised is purely for this purpose, we have no intention of using donations towards ongoing running costs, that’s not what we’re about. Our only aim is to safeguard the long term future of the centre and the land. In the event that we are unsuccessful we intend to refund all our supporters. Donations should be regarded as a gift and not the purchase of a share of the land.
We thank you in advance for your support and kind donations.