Yesterday’s Cheadle Area Committee was at Cheadle library – not the usual venue.  It was a quick meeting too (normal service will  doubtless resume after the election).

The surprise of the night was on funding for the Gatley Festival.  The organisers are having trouble raising the £8,000 needed to run the week of events and had come to ask the Cheadle & Gatley councillors for help.

We have £3,900 to hand out to local community groups over the next year (let me know if you’d like to apply for some of it).  We all want the Gatley Festival to succeed so we were keen to give what we could, but felt the full £1,800 being asked for was just too big a chunk of our total budget and would mean other groups losing out.

In the end we all agreed on £1,200.

Then, after we’d heard a planning application, the applicant shocked everyone by saying he’d match our donation, making £2,400 in total.  He explained that he was a businessman, and had previously been wheelchair-bound for a year so was happy to donate towards the money – much of which is for flooring to go around the entrance of the field, stopping it getting too muddy and making it accessible for disabled visitors.

I don’t yet know the name of the gentleman – the paperwork only named his agent – but I’d like to say a big thank you for such a generous and unexpected gesture.

(We were also very glad it was only mentioned after the planning application had been granted!).