Royal British Legion
Our wonderful Cherry Hinton RBL Branch was hoping to contribute a large sum of money from the sale of the Fishers Lane HQ to the library project. This contribution would have been vital to the HUB project. In return, the large meeting room built into the library extension would have been available as the new RBL HQ and would have been ideal. Unfortunately, to the great disappointment of our branch members and HUB project team, all the money from the sale has been witheld by the RBL Branch Property Trust Trustees Committee.
This may well have meant the demise of the whole library HUB project. However at a City Council meeting in October 2021, the Council agreed additional funding support to make up the deficit.
Paul Holmes, Chairman of the Royal British Legion Cherry Hinton Branch, said:
“On 18 June 2009 the members of the Royal British Legion Cherry Hinton Branch took the decision to sell their premises in Fishers Lane, Cherry Hinton. In 2014 the premises were sold to a property developer and the site is now a small housing estate called Poppy Close. Since that time the Cherry Hinton Branch has been homeless and has no venue from which to promote itself and nowhere from which it has the facility to offer assistance to the many Service and Ex-Service residents and their families living in the area.”
“We desperately need a secure location from which to operate, to advertise our existence and to display the artefacts we have accumulated over the years. An extension to the library, and being in the centre of the village, is an ideal location for the RBL to have a presence.”
“The Branch, despite not having a venue to operate from, still performs the activities that are expected from the Legion including Armistice Sunday at our War Memorial and the Poppy Appeal for which we collected £16,060.70 in 2019. Next year is 100 years since the Royal British Legion was formed. What a wonderful birthday present it would be to see part of a building that we could call home.”