Vital Lancaster charity is 'Moving On' after 45 years in Sun Street

The charity’s base is now up for sale and a fundraising appeal has been launched to acquire new bigger and more suitable accommodation.

Founded upstairs at the former YMCA in China Street in 1972, the Lancaster branch of The Samaritans now has more than 100 volunteers and has outgrown its Sun Street premises which opened in 1979. The building is up for sale for offers in the region of £190,000.

Last year, the local branch answered more than 12,000 phone calls and spent more than 3,500 hours supporting callers.

The charity is also involved in partnership working, education and outreach projects, and trains prisoners at Lancaster Farms to become face-to-face listeners for fellow prisoners.

Going forward, the local branch, which offers support to anyone finding life difficult day or night 365 days a year, hopes to move to a fully accessible centre enabling it to recruit volunteers more widely.

The move would provide more space allowing for more volunteers to be on duty and offer training facilities instead of having to hire them.

It would also provide space to collect and store stock for the charity shop and equipment for outreach and other work.

New premises must have safe parking spaces for volunteers, especially in the middle of the night, and reliable technology to help respond to callers.

“We are looking around the district for suitable premises and when we move will depend on when we have raised the funds we need and identifying suitable premises we can afford including sustainability going forward,” said director Chris Ingham.

The fundraising project called Moving On aims to raise £150,000 while still raising money for ongoing running costs at the Sun Street centre which average out at £32,000 annually.

The Samaritans is appealing to businesses and organisations to make it their charity of the year or a beneficiary of charity events. The branch is also inviting choirs and singing groups to hold fundraising concerts.

Any one-off donations or donations in kind of equipment, time or resources would also be welcome.

Anyone wishing to make a donation or discuss ways to support the charity should email [email protected] or go to https://www.samaritans.org/branches/lancaster/ for more information.