Cheetham Hill Cricket Club COVID Response

Aim

CHCC has been forced by Covid-19 to halt its activity during the crisis. This project is aimed to support a strong bounce back for the club.

Overview

Cheetham Hill Cricket Club operates within Manchester City Council, with the objective to promote, develop and facilitate sports at all ages and levels within our wider community. Membership of the club is open to anyone interested in sport regardless of sex, age, disability, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, or other beliefs.

Our main sporting activities include a bowls section, football mainly for the under 16 youth membership and squash. Our current membership of these sections stands at: Bowls: 20, Football: 300, Squash: 90.

The club further plays host to the T’Mimei Lew special needs school during the day in our clubhouse and to Little Superstars school holiday camp programme, both of which provide a further connection to our local community.

The committee strive to support and facilitate the delivery of these sports and organisations, and we are pleased to report that overall numbers in our club membership are growing steadily year on year.

Throughout the last 12months the club has worked hard to invest back in our facilities to ensure they are restored back to the best condition possible for the membership. This has so far seen investment of over £25,000 placed into the clubhouse, fields and changing facilities from grant investment.

Covid-19 Pandemic

Covid has affected many sports clubs up and down the country and Cheetham Hill Cricket Club is no different. Below are a list of ways we have been affected. We are using this campaign, the passion of our committee and membership to ensure we bounce back in the most positive of lights:

• Loss of a whole seasons bowls recreational and competitive play and the membership income there of
• Loss of 7 months of squash recreational and competitive play and membership prices adjusted to reflect this
• Return to squash play in the further 4 months of the year has been severely restricted and reduced the options and offering to the membership. This and the lost months has seen price of memberships severely reduced in cost.
• Reduced and lost court light income accounts to between £500-700 a month 
• Reduced recreational and competitive play to the football section for 6 months 
• Loss of 11months of bar revenue and wider functions in our clubhouse
• Lost coaching income for our football and squash sections just to the halting in play

All these implications have had knock on affects to the clubs revenue over the year which we want to help cover off to help continue our plans to move the club forwards.

The Mission

We wish to bounce back stronger than ever from Covid-19 and are looking to crowdfund more funds to further invest back into the infrastructure of the club. We want to ensure our facility remains relevant, vibrant and a safe multi-sport facility post the pandemic. We have ambitious plans to develop our facilities further both in our changing and squash facilities. 

As an idea of the costings of areas we are looking to develop please see some quotes below. All donations will help turn the next stage of our journey to better the club into reality.

• Upgrades to the overall facility (carpets, decorating) to make it a safe vibrant place - £5-7,000
• Court No 3 improvement - £10,641.00 
• LED lighting facility upgrades - £7020.00 

Squash Section 

Over the past year and despite the current government restrictions that surround the COVID-19 pandemic, we have worked to keep our squash facilities open, when permitted, through the clever promotion of a COVID-19 squash membership scheme and coaching programme for squash members. This has seen us increase our membership count from 40 to our current state of 90 members. We are conscious our growth has come from offering more flexible membership and pitching this right moving out the pandemic will be key to maintaining and future growth. 

In addition to this significant growth and to encourage a sense of belonging to the squash section community, we have further set up voluntary workdays where our members have helped improve and secure our existing infrastructure no end.

Football Section

The football section continues to go from strength to strength with 300 members, with its FA Chartered Standard Status. 

The section boasts 22 teams from under 7's up to under 17's. We have 3 additional training groups that train under 8 girls, and year 1 and reception age groups. The section prides itself on being socially inclusive to the community and is continually pushing to grow female participation. 

CHCC Improving Local Community Links

As part of our constitution, we have already stated that CHCC operates within Manchester City Council district, with the objective to promote, develop and facilitate sports including squash at all ages and levels within our wider community. 

We aim to deliver on this constitution in three ways: 

By Investment 

By investing back into our current facilities, our committee team strives to provide a modern professional environment where our members can improve and develop their chosen sport. So, with this in mind, we would like our squash and changing facility to reflect the motivated members that use it and provide a fresh and vibrant facility that stands out within the local community and beyond.  

By Growth  

CHCC have demonstrated that we have the aptitude to grow our membership even through testing times, which we have done by recruitment of an active coaching team and by offering more flexible membership options to attract players. By improving our facility, we are confident that this will provide the club with a greater chance of further increasing our membership. 

Our key fob system is one of the clubs USP’s which allows the club to be open 24 hours a day providing access to the facility even around key religious events, again reflecting the needs of our local community. 

Through Sustainment 

Investment in the club facility will help us improve our standing within the local community, in modernising our courts and changing they will stand out as one of the go-to facilities longer term. 

By helping invest in this project, it will allow us to quickly execute on the major structural work required to underpin the changes. Once completed, the club can sensibly structure our income to maintain the premises to the highest level by utilising our membership and court light income for annual maintenance.  

This project successfully funded on 26th February 2021