CHURCH volunteers hope a flower festival and concert will have raised £1,000 for improvements to community facilities.

Harrowgate Hill Method-ist Church, in Darlington, needs to raise £375,000 to rebuild its hall, lounge and annex, to make the facilities more accessible.

Helen Hamilton, a church volunteer and treasurer of the building fund, said that at present if a group is using the hall, the other rooms cannot be used, because of access problems.

The volunteers aim to solve this and make the buildings accessible to the disabled to provide a much-needed community facility.

At the weekend, there was a flower festival in church, featuring about 30 arrangements by church groups and friends of the church, as well as a concert on Saturday by local soprano Val McConachie and Alan Curtis.

"We have a had a really good weekend," said Mrs Hamilton. "We have had lots of people through the doors and the atmosphere has been wonderful.

"All the money raised will go to the building project to encourage more people in the local area, especially young people, to use the premises and make the place more viable.

"At the moment we have dance classes, self defence classes, groups for young children, but we would like to extend that for older children and the college has also said it would provide computing courses to help unemployed people find work.

"We have lots of things we would like to do, but at the moment the building just doesn't lend itself to these things."

As well as fundraising events the church is also applying for various grants. It is hoped that by next March it will have enough money to start building work.