About us

Linwood brickLinwood Community Development Trust (LCDT) was formed by a group of volunteers from the local community, who want to improve health and wellbeing, reduce social inequalities and build social capital within Linwood.

Linwood has had a long history of being an industrial Town that spans back to the 1400’s. It has been mined, fracked, chemicalised, dumped on, retailed, engineered, manufactured, de-populated and then abandoned by those who extracted what they wanted. They left us with a legacy of social and environmental problems - no policy of the polluter or the exploiter paying has ever been enforced.

The other side to Linwood was and continues to be a lively, resilient, fun-loving community. Made up of decent folk. It’s ours …… the others are always just passing through.

Our Town was asleep for a while, not really noticing things creeping up on our community, simply because we were concentrating on our daily lives. However, when friends from Linwood gathered in the autumn of 2009, we finished up having a right old whine (with some wine of course). The whining was about the news that our community centre was to be demolished. We also whined about how Tesco had set up a company to land bank our shopping centre and turn it into a slum. These two issues were the catalyst for us to look at our Town from a different angle. That night, once the whining - and the wine finished, six women decided it was time to have a voice for what Linwood People wanted for OUR Town. However, very quickly, we woke up to the fact that our priorities, were being blocked and ignored, so we decided to take back control and take action.

Our vision is to provide assets and services that will be aligned with the needs of our community to nurture ambition, aspiration and creativity to support the building of resilience, confidence and skills of all ages and groups; as individuals and as a community, to reach their full potential. We believe this asset-based approach will contribute to the wellbeing of individuals and lead to the transformational change of people and place.

LCDT has acquired 15 acres of land through the Community Empowerment Act to build much needed community facilities to make our vision a reality. These facilities will be the hub of our community and will be developed through our capital project, known locally as the “Mossedge Village”.

More than 12 years on, and with the support and financial assistance of funders, we have achieved our goal of building a £3million community owned all weather football pitch and Community Centre, known locally as “The Mossedge Village”.

We have described our 12 year experience as ‘rolling jelly up a hill’ as it has been a very difficult journey with many crossroads and barriers – no mean feat!

LCDT is a non-profit, charitable organisation and all surpluses are reinvested back into the community.

Board members

  • Sharon-Anne Ross (Chair)
  • Jeanette Anderson (Director)
  • Jacqueline Thompson (Director)
  • Doreen Brown (Co-opted Director)
  • Carrie Shaw (Co-opted Director)

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