Abridge Evangelical Church approached Church Growth Trust for help with their church property. They had been exploring ways to provide better wheelchair access into their building and also needed to provide an accessible toilet along with some other internal improvements. They instructed Church Growth Trust to carry out a feasibility report to explore these issues and to propose a way of overcoming them.
Gill Pedler (CGT’s Architect) visited the building and carried out a measured survey and assessment of the building.
The main entrance had a number of steps and providing a ramp here would have been difficult due to the proximity to the drive way and to the boundary of the site in front of the building.
Internally the existing kitchen was roughly the same size as a compliant accessible toilet so it made sense to incorporate the toilet within this space and build a new room for a larger kitchen that would be adjacent to the main hall and could include serveries into both adjacent areas for serving hot drinks in a safer way.
After the church had considered the proposals we agreed a scheme that would include the essential work to provide level access and wheelchair accessible toilet facility as a first phase along with some other alterations required to make this possible.
Church Growth Trust drew up the working drawings in preparation for a building regulation application and for going out to tender for quotes from local builders. The church building is used throughout the year by the local primary school and it was important that the building work was carried out inside the school holidays so that the school could continue to use the building uninterrupted. These dates were presented to the contractors at tender stage to ensure that they would be available to carry out the work within the time available.
The work was carried out within the time allocated and within budget, the church are really pleased with the finished project and the photographs featured show the different areas of the building before and after.
