Grant amount: £15,000
Higham Cricket Club
- Grant programme: Active Lives
- Region: Yorkshire and the Humber
Towards the cost of a new accessible practice facility for disability cricket
About the organisation
Higham CC are an amateur village club based in the village of Higham on the outskirts of Barnsley. We were formed in 1875, competing in our early years in the Darton & District League. By the post-WWII period, we were playing in the Huddersfield Central League, of whose Premier Division we became longstanding members. We currently have 4 Adult Teams, 3 Womens Teams and 5 Junior Teams as well as links to Yorkshire Disability CC, Barnsley College Learning for Living & Work Department & Greenacre SEND School.
Organisation’s objectives:
- Foster and promote the amateur sport of cricket at all levels within the community and within the sport, providing opportunities for recreation, coaching and competition.
- Provide facilities for and to promote participation in the amateur sport of cricket in South Yorkshire and encourage all members to participate fully in the activities of the Club.
- Ensure that all members, playing and non-playing, abide by the clubs Code of Conduct which incorporates the ECB guidelines on codes of conduct and is written ‘in the Spirit of Cricket.’
About the project
Accessible Practice Facility
The Peter Harrison Foundation supported our project to build an Accessible Practice Facility at out cricket club. As a club, we actively work with Yorkshire Disability CC and have links to schools and colleges such as Barnsley College (Learning for Living & Work Department) and Greenare SEND school. As our commitment to Disability Cricket grew, we needed to build a bespoke facility that would allow us to offer quality practice sessions and be welcoming and accessible to all. Without this project, we would have been unable to increase our Disability Cricket offer.
Impact of PHF’s support
The project has allowed us to become a Super1s Hub in partnership with Barnsley College. This is the only Super1s Hub in Yorkshire (excluding Headingley) and offers weekly disability cricket sessions to 12-25 yr olds living with a disability. The project was completed in July 2023 and since then we have had over 230 individuals with a disclosed disability that have used the facility. Our 2024 projection is for that to be closer to 400. We have been running weekly sessions since December 2023 and have seen a huge uptake in participation as a result.
The facility has a life expectancy of over 20 years (at which point we can upcycle the practice area with new matting) so the project has already started to leave a lasting legacy and will be of huge importance to our club and our links with disability cricket for decades to come.
How does your organisation exemplify PHF’s values?
Higham Cricket Club isn’t a stereotypical cricket club. We endeavour to continually improve our facilities and services to our community to ensure we continue to meet and exceed their demands. To achieve this, we invest heavily in our people, our facilities and our community to ensure that we can always offer the best possible outcomes. Our committment to this has allowed us to continually achieve excellence and invest over £500k in our club over the past 7 years. To do this, there has obviously been an abundance of entrepreneurship to deliver the investment we have achieved, as well as to see gaps in the market and missing services that we have been able to fill such as the Super 1s initiative.
Our values as a club are to be open to all and to lead with integrity for members to follow. This is embodied into all that we do to ensure we create a welcoming and safe environment. Lastly, we are an exceptionally sustainable club both in terms of financial and our approach to the environment. We are able to generate an operating profit each year which is then reinvested into the club through new projects or to maintain current facilities. In addition, we are carbon careful with our approach to new projects & materials and always aim to manage the lifecycle of facilities efficiently. We also opened our new community garden in 2024 which has fruit, vegetables and herbs all free for community use.