Cambridge Centre Announcement

At Villiers Park, we know that to empower disadvantaged young people to succeed, we must address the challenges - systemic and personal - that our beneficiaries face today.

Over the last century, one of Villiers’ strengths has been our courage to make bold decisions to change how we work to achieve the best life chances for the young people we work with. The Board and Senior Leadership Team have recently completed a comprehensive strategic review to enable growth and expansion. This review has included consideration of how to most effectively use our assets and resources to increase our impact on behalf of current and future beneficiaries. After careful consideration, our board of trustees has taken the hard decision to sell the Cambridge Centre, so that we can maximise our impact and influence for the future by creating opportunity for growth.

This decision marks another significant milestone in Villiers Park’s development. The decision is not driven by the Trust’s current financial health, which is positive despite the challenges of the last two years. Rather, it is wholly based on a vision and commitment to grow the charity. Resources will be directed towards investing in our impact over the next decade and beyond. It will enable the Trust to expand current and develop future programmes, to be more agile, to extend our reach and influence, to work directly with more young people, to invest in infrastructure and people, and to create future revenue streams from investments.

We know that the young people who attended our residential courses at the Cambridge Centre found them hugely valuable and enjoyable experiences, however due to the size of the centre we were only able to offer them to very limited numbers of young people. We remain committed to residentials, and this decision awards us with the huge opportunity to have more residential courses, involving more students, working in partnership with universities and others across the UK. Further, it enables us to expand our specialist residential offer, with wider access to facilities such as laboratories and industry settings which the Cambridge Centre does not have.

Work will now progress on the sale of the Cambridge Centre. We will share with you news of our progress and new developments, but in the meantime if you have questions please don’t hesitate to contact me at vp@villierspark.org.uk.