Who we are Luton Tabernacle is a family church based in Luton. We have been working in the Hockwell Ring catchment for the last 7 years. Our vision has always been to reach out to meet the needs of the community where the church is based. What we do In order to fulfill our God given vision to reach out to our community with the love of God , we have carried and still carry out various outreach projects. We provide food hampers to the elderly through social services recommendation, we ran a soup kitchen for many years which had to stop due to cost of hall hire and logistical problems. We now give out free hot meals once a month in the community, we also have run ‘beauty for ashes, a project that reaches out to ladies in the community. In addition to these, we have for many years run family events such as a summer BBQ, family pamper day where we provided free beauty and nail sessions and gave away quality second hand clothes, shoes and toys. At Christmas time, we have run a community Christmas party with a Santa’s grotto and free gifts for all children who attended. We have also work with those with drug and alcohol addictions which is a prevalent problem in the area. Our work has been severely hindered by the fact that we do not have our own building and it has been very costly and difficult to depend on the local community centre considering that we do not charge for any of the services we render to the community. Our Petition The Old People’s Day Centre where we meet on Sunday mornings has recently become available. We would like to acquire the building as a place of worship and to continue to offer valuable services to our community. Having our own building will enable us to do so much more. It will centralize our activities and allow us to fulfill our vision to reach out to the Hockwell Ring community. For example, we wish to provide a service to single mums in the area of which there are many but this has proved impossible without a venue to operate from. We have requested that the Council lease or sell the building to us. However, the Council has declined and would like to give the property to the highest bidder. This may in effect eliminate smaller organizations like ours. We would really appreciate your support by signing our petition.