Thorplands Residents Association celebrates after receiving £5,255 of National Lottery funding.

This will help support the activities it runs within their local community. The group based in Thorplands, will use the funding to hold a family fun day during the summer holidays for local children and their families.

The community family fun day will be completely free, so no one has to worry about budgeting and cost will not be a barrier to attend the event. The Thorplands community can just come along with their families, enjoy themselves, relax, and hopefully have fun. There will be fun inflatables including a bouncy castle, assault course, sumo wrestling plus face painting, entertainment and refreshments.

Thorplands Residents Association is run by a committee of 6 local residents who hold meetings once a month. These meetings provide residents of Thorplands with the opportunity to meet with representatives from Northamptonshire Police, local Councillors, Northamptonshire Partnership Homes and the neighbourhood warden. The purpose of these meetings is to discuss any issues that may concern them and to find out about any new information that may affect the community in which they live.

The group also runs a Craft group and Coffee morning each week in the Thorplands Community Hub. These groups are free to attend. Additionally, they organise seasonal events including Halloween, Christmas and Easter events.

The funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK, will see the Residents Association continue their work within the community. Hopefully the event will encourage even more families to come along and get involved and help to build new relationships within the community.

Sarah Hayman, Chairwoman of the resident’s association, says: “We’re delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognized our work in this way. Now, thanks to National Lottery players, we will be able to continue with our plans for our Community Family Fun Day Event. This will help both the children and the parents to build relationships with others facing similar challenges in our community and to create their own supportive circles of friends and peers while enjoying lots of fun and laughter in a relaxed environment.”

The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its new strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030.

As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.

National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year The National Lottery Community Fund was able to distribute over half a billion pounds (£588.2 million) of life-changing funding to communities. To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk