Darnall Centre, Sheffield – Community Gym Renovation (006175)

The community boxing and fitness gym opened in September 2015 and has proved very popular and is doing excellent work in partnership with local health and wellbeing groups, local council, police, mental health hospital, family centres, community youth team and schools.

The gym is open to the public 7 days a week, with a daily ABA affiliated boxing club (Empire) which attracted over 400 members in its first 12 months, and a range of fitness classes and clubs (including women-only fitness classes, over 50’s fitness club, and a junior gym club).

The facility is in an ideal location and has exceeded expectations in terms of the numbers of daily attendees. The building is leased on a ‘peppercorn’ rent agreement, and although work went into getting the gym to a standard that was acceptable and safe enough to open to the public, the gym space is in need of some changes to enable the applicants to retain the high number of service users and to ensure the projects continuance.