We are currently developing a community facility that will house a Boxing and Mixed martial Arts Gym. Although this will be located centrally in Maidenhead Town Centre the Gym and facilities will be available to serve the whole Borough.

Following the success of our 'Royals Amateur Boxing Club' in Datchet, the Maidenhead facility will run under the 'Royals Gym' banner incorporating the current Royals Brand and extending it to include 'Royals Mixed Martial Arts'. In addition to training sessions being open to young people along the lines of the Datchet Club, the facility will also be offered to local schools that we will work with to support relevant activities as part of their curriculum or after school activities. We are also encouraging interest from the Youth Offending Team to provide official interventions for Young People on Referral Schemes. There is also a growing National interest in providing this kind of activity to groups with learning difficulties and specific disabilities shown to be helped by this kind of activity.

Boxing and Martial arts are sports appealing to young and old, male and female from all walks of life and social backgrounds; Royals Gym will not just be available to young people out of normal working hours, we hope this facility will bring together all groups from across the borough including members of ethnic communities and minority groups. In support of this we have obtained approval for funding from the 'One Borough' panel, as an ongoing project further funding is always needed so we welcome any offers or suggestions as to where this may be obtained. It is intended that the Gym will become self financing through fees from groups and private instructors renting the space for classes where available.

Planning permission permitting, we hope to open late March early April from then on the running of such a facility will require physical as well as financial assistance. In the mean time I am collating a list of potential coaches and helpers willing to lend their time and expertise. We ideally need a pool of suitably qualified coaches for boxing and martial arts sessions; we also need to find a small group to form a committee responsible for the financial and administrative details as well as being committed to steering the club in the right direction. If you know of anyone who may be qualified and/or interested in getting involved please do not hesitate to contact me.

Before any of this can go ahead we need to secure planning permission, full details of the application can be found on the RBWM Planning Portal: http://www.rbwm.gov.uk/pam/view.jsp?ID=10%2F00083%2FFULL any views or comments in support of the application made on the online will clearly be greatly appreciated.