King Alfred News

10th March 2016My big announcement is that after nearly four years of extremely hard work, many meetings, a lot of stress and an awful lot of luck we have finally been named as the winning bidders for the King Alfred on Hove Seafront. As you may have heard over the years this really was an audacious bid by us to lead on one of the largest developments in the City. At precisely 6.30pm on 21st January 2016, after a long and drawn out few days I took the phone call that I had been desperately wanting and equally frightened of receiving from Brighton & Hove City Council. Fortunately it was great news that the Starr Trust in partnership with Crest Nicholson were the chosen bidders to deliver the new King Alfred to our wonderful City.If the development goes to plan in the next few years it heralds in the single biggest step forward for The Starr Trust in our 8 years.What does this actually mean to us in real terms? Well for starters it means that our profile just went through the roof. There will not be many people or businesses in the City that will not hear about us and what we stand for. This is absolutely massive for us as a small local charity as it means we can now stand out amongst a City crowded with many wonderful charities; we all fight for space to get our message heard and this is now our chance. This by no means is a road littered with riches, sadly not, however it does mean that it allows us to speak to more people and companies about why they should support us and a big part of our introduction will already have been done. This will be such a massive help to us in raising much needed funds to support our wonderful Edward Starr Champions, both existing and new.Secondly it means that looking to the future we will have a permanent home for ourselves, one that not only gives us some fantastic space to reach out to the wider community, but one that is bang slap in the middle of the seafront; what an amazing location for us to have, just incredible. The next 12 months, and indeed for the next few years, we will continue to raise funds and help as many young people in the BN post code as we possibly can. We will however also be looking to the future and our new home on the seafront to see how we can in fact broaden who we help. We never want to lose what we do, as championing young people to be the best that they can be is what we are all about, but maybe, just maybe, in the near future, with the help of existing and new supporters, and being based on the seafront in Hove, we can extend help to a greater part of our amazing community.Our King Alfred Partners at Crest Nicholson are currently building us a new King Alfred website which we’ll be linking to going forward.Thank you for your continued support and encouragement.Rob StarrChairman