© 2020 All rights reserved
The community centre at the heart of Ferryside
Welcome to Ferryside’s community centre. Our doors are open to you, whether you are popping in for a cup of tea, joining one of our social groups, holding a meeting or seeing one of our tenant businesses. Calon y Fferi is run for the benefit of our local community, with sustainability and ethical practices as our core values.
Calon y Fferi is the brainchild of a small group of dedicated volunteers who wanted to give back to their village. The now vibrant community centre, housing many and varied organisations and services, started out as a dilapidated set of buildings left empty and unloved. The site is now being transformed into a hive of activity, providing a range of services to the public as well as business and tourist accommodation.
Ferryside Social Enterprise Group (FSEG) (Charitable Incorporated Organisation reg. no. 1158602) was set up in 2014 as a community-minded group who saw great potential in a redundant, deteriorating county council asset left vacant for 6 years. The 1-hectare site comprised a main block with 60 bedrooms, a kitchen and classrooms (formerly a residential education centre), some huts built in the 1940s as temporary accommodation and workshop space for the RAF, a sports hall and two portacabins.
With a business model aiming to balance social and welfare benefits to meet the needs of a diverse local population, while providing affordable business units, FSEG aimed to address issues of rural poverty and social exclusion in a way that is economically and environmentally sustainable. In 2015, ten trustees signed a 99-year lease in order to realise this vision, and Calon y Fferi was born.
Backed by grants from Welsh and European Funding and Coastal Communities, the site is being developed to create a community hub while maintaining and improving the biodiversity of the grounds. [links to Carmarthenshire County Council, CFB (Welsh Government), WCF],
© 2020 All rights reserved