Surrey charity finds permanent home after five year search
Change of Scene have had approval granted for them to build a new home in Frensham
A Surrey charity has had approval for a new home granted, ending years of uncertainty.
Change of Scene looks after children with learning difficulties who are struggling in school, and provides animal assisted learning with the aim of getting their confidence back.
The charity has faced uncertainty over the past years as until recently, they were unable to find a new home with their lease for their home in Farnham running out.
However now, Waverley Borough Council have granted permission for the charity to build a new site in Frensham, which comes with a 25 year lease.
CEO of the charity, Pam Robinson told us about how much the the approval means to her
"To be honest, I think it took me a couple of days to get my head round the fact that it was actually real and that I could let go because I've been living with that anxiety for so long.
I've been looking for sites for over 5 years, it's been, I've been expecting it all to fall through and that I was going to have to go back to that position of, OK, so we have to wrap everything up. So it took me a couple of days to be able to just relax."
Pam also told us about just how precarious the situation had been in the lead up to the approval
"So we have to leave where we are at the moment. So we've got to leave by the end of June. So to be honest, if we hadn't got planning, we would have had to close. We were at that point where this was our last option. We've looked at a number of sites over the years.
Everything's either not something that we can follow up on or has fallen through. So had we not been successful with planning, I would be winding up this charity and starting to make staff redundant and trying to find placements for the children. So that's what it means to us. It's huge."
Pam also added that for the first time since she's started working at the charity, she's been able to look at the long term future.
She told us that she had already been able to show the site to a few of the families that use the charity
"So some of the children, we had to start doing transition because change is really hard for them. So some of the children have been to visit the site and they've walked around and they love it. It's really quiet and so for them to have a place, it's very secluded as well."
Pam told us about what the main next steps were
"So we've got two things. We'll start the build, but we'll also start in earnest the fundraising for the money that we haven't got that we still need.
So those two things will start in January now that we've got planning."