St James’ Leith have worked hard to complete the first phase of an ongoing building project, aiming to create a sustainable and accessible space, to better serve their community into the future. Colin Finlayson, member of St James’ Leith Property Committee describes the work below.
In 2025 we looked forward, and wrote this business plan, seeking to set out what we wanted to achieve in our buildings in the next few years. From 2023 to 2026 we have actively sought to serve our community better, and in many ways the success of this has been one of the drivers for our building strategy.
Currently we have about 20,000 community users of our building each year, some activities in partnership with our members. Our kitchen and toilets were very dated, particularly not having an accessible toilet.
With very strong financial support from the Province through a building grant, and grants from the Baird Trust, The Congregational and General Fund (sadly closed at the moment) and Awards for All, and with the use of some of our reserves and congregational fund raising, we reached the cost of creating an accessible toilet and refurbishing our kitchen – close to £100,000.
Our contractor – Platinum – was on site every day and did a good job, but changes we made as the contract went along added considerably to the cost – not something to be recommended! We are however delighted with the results you can see in the photographs.
We are now seeking to move to the next stage of appointing our architect to plan and get the necessary warrants to replace our flat uninsulated roofs, add external wall cladding to our uninsulated walls and install a heat pump and solar panels. We are aiming for our buildings to become net zero before 2030.
We thought the funding for the toilets and kitchen was a challenge – this is a much bigger one with a budget close to £250,000. We are positive this can be achieved and would value your prayers!
Colin Finlayson, St James’ Leith Property Committee
