A new youth facility is coming to Redditch from a partnership of organisations led by Redditch Borough Council.

The new facility is set to open this year outside the Kingfisher Shopping Centre, in a specially refurbished double unit in the recently renovated covered market area.

It will host a variety of youth activities and workshops and comes about through an innovative approach to partnership funding and working.

First, the centre will be refurbished by local young people working with mentors from community interest company Volunteer It Yourself.

Volunteer It Yourself works with young people to learn trades and employability skills through helping to fix local youth and community facilities, and this project is funded by Toolstation, their main funder, which has a distribution centre in Redditch.

It means 17 local young people, nominated by local youth providers including schools, the YMCA, and the UP Foundation, will help renovate the centre and gain new skills and hands-on experience.

Inside the centre the young people will install a new kitchen, build a new storage cupboard, and redecorate, while for the outside they’ll make benches, a planter, bee and bird boxes, and honeycomb trellis.

After that, enhanced youth support workers from Redditch Borough Council’s Community Safety team working with Young Solutions Worcestershire will manage the facility using funding secured from the Worcestershire Contain Outbreak Management Fund.

Redditch Borough Council’s Portfolio Holder for Community Services, Cllr Nyear Nazir, said: “This is an example of how we can bring together partners with a range of skills and expertise and harness that to deliver projects for people in Redditch.

“Young people and the wider community get so many benefits from these kinds of services, where talent and skills can be nurtured, which is why creating this space has been one of our community safety priorities. I am excited for the opportunities this new facility will bring to young people in our town.”

Leader of the Council, Cllr Matt Dormer, said: “It’s great to see that innovative partnership working like this will yield another asset for the town centre.”

The facility, which will be named later by the young people who use it, could be up and running as early as this September.