image credit: Broughton Trust

A Salford charity is appealing for support with maintenance and running costs of its building after the ongoing cost-of-living crisis has threatened worker’s job security.

The Broughton Trust’s Humphrey Booth Centre building on Heath Avenue requires £3,500 a month to stay open. The building, which the trust opened in 2011, is used as offices and for teaching the programmes they run.

The charity receives money from organisations like Aviva’s Community Fund to help run courses and lessons.

image credit - Broughton Trust
The Humphrey Booth Center in Lower Borughton

But that does not cover costs for staff wages and bills, which have surged due to the cost of living crisis, so they have begun an appeal.

Elaine Jones, customer service and quality officer at the trust, said: “A lot of the high funders, they don’t recognise core funding.

“There’s about seven or eight members of staff behind the scenes. We’re struggling to get funding for. We’ve only raised about £600, but it’s better than nothing.”

The centre has four classrooms, where they operate classes for young adults not in employment, education or training to gain skills and qualifications to find jobs, along with programmes for ex-offenders.

They have already received a boost with the support of Salix Homes to assist in fundraising at a board meeting last week.

A closure would affect their outreach work, which is based on the site as well.

Salford City College and the Community and Voluntary Service use it as a learning and community space, which would be forced to be moved elsewhere.

Mrs Jones added: “If this building goes, we’d lose our jobs. We’ll all be made redundant.”

image credit - Broughton Trust
A CSCS employment course at the Humphrey Booth Center

To support the Humphrey Booth Centre, the website can be found here.

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