£1.2m Wolverhampton city centre church revamp approved

Tabernacle Baptist Church in Dunstall Road wants to transform the site to provide better facilities for worshippers.

Under plans, existing extensions will be demolished and a new entrance, worship space and cafeteria built.

The existing church will be converted to provide community rooms and offices.

Jonathan Somerville, the head Pastor at the church, said they were looking to expand the site as the church had seen 'significant growth' in its visitors in the last few years.

He said: "I have been the pastor here for the last seven years and in that time we have had some significant growth.

"Wolverhampton bucks national trends in that sense that attendances at Christian churches like ours in the city are growing as numbers drop across the country.

"Our current building gets full in the morning so we were faced with getting a bigger building or splitting the morning up into two processions. We wanted to let the procession grow and remain as one so we opted for the bigger building."

The original chapel was built in 1931 and dominates the junction of Dunstall Road. It also has a 1960s extension comprising a multi-purpose hall, community kitchen and first floor office accommodation. It is attended by 150-200 worshippers on a Sunday morning, nearly full capacity.

The revamp will see the Church now able to hold a capacity of around 400, double what is on offer at the moment.

Planning documents submitted to the council last month state: "The tired spaces do not comfortably accommodate the current activities at the church. With the planned pastoral and social activities of the future the current building will not fulfil the needs of the community and congregation."

Mr Somerville does not know the exact cost of the extension and revamp, and won't know until the tender is put out. However he said he told the architects, Thorne Architecture at Wolverhampton Science Park, that the church was looking at a budget of around £1.2 million.

He said: "We'll know for sure once planning permission has been granted and the tender has gone out. But we are working closely with the architects and we gave them a preliminary budget of roughly £1.2 million.

"For us it was important that we got local companies with local skills on board, there's lots of great church architects out there across the country that wanted to get involved but we felt it was important to go local and Thorne have been great."

Asked finally for his thoughts on the revamp, Mr Somerville said: "We're very very excited, we really are. It's not every day that you get to do something like this."