Over the past five years, our partnership with the Westminster Foundation has helped us create new opportunities for children, young people and the wider Chester community through sport, education, health and wellbeing. Their long-term backing helped transform what we can do, and who we can do it for.
At the heart of the partnership is the King George V Community Sports Hub in Blacon. The £1.8 million facility gave us something we had never had before: a dedicated base from which to grow our work and deepen our connection with the local community.
Westminster Foundation contributed to the capital build, and its funding also supported our community development staff. That let us broaden our work well beyond traditional football delivery. Today, the hub hosts a much wider programme of activity for local people.
It has also become an important home for girls’ football. Cheshire Girls Football League fixtures and training sessions now take place on our pitches, so local girls can play closer to home.
Some of the work we’re proudest of is with young people. We launched the Blacon Youth Hub in 2024, and it now has 75 registered members, with an average of 51 young people attending each week across our junior and senior sessions. Our own monitoring and evaluation found that 84% of young people reported increased confidence, and 82% reported a stronger sense of community and belonging.
Our Post-16 Football Education programme offers another pathway for local 16 to 19-year-olds, combining full-time education with football development, coaching and mentoring. In 2024/25, every student passed, and every student moved on to a positive destination, whether university, employment, an apprenticeship or an opportunity within Chester FC.
Over these five years, we’ve significantly expanded our reach. We now deliver more than 30 programmes across sport, education, health and wellbeing, and social inclusion, working alongside local authorities, schools, health organisations, community groups, funders and businesses. The Foundation’s support helped us strengthen those partnerships and reach more people.
The hub has been central to this, supporting everything from walking sports and pan-disability football to wellbeing walks, stay-and-play sessions, art, school holiday activities and healthy diet education.
Our 2024/25 Social Value Impact Report identified £8.7 million of social value generated through our programmes and partnerships.
As the Westminster Foundation Partnership Grant comes to an end, we’re focused on building on the foundations laid over the past five years. Our priorities include increasing community use of the Hub, developing new partnerships, and continuing to grow the Blacon Youth Hub, Post-16 Football Education, health and wellbeing activities, inclusive sport and school-based projects.
This partnership shows what long-term investment can do for a community organisation. It gave us the stability to respond to local needs, build strong partnerships and create opportunities for children and young people. We’re grateful to the Westminster Foundation for believing in that approach from the start.
Together, we’ve produced a Celebratory Report reflecting on the partnership and what we’ve achieved over the past five years.