THE conference centre at All Hallows Hospital in Ditchingham is to be taken over by the Christian Conference Trust (CCT), it was announced this week.Subject to final agreement, the CCT will take over from November 1 of this year, and the Centre formerly known as St Gabriel's will be re-named the Belsey Bridge Conference Centre as it lies adjacent to the Belsey Bridge Road.

THE conference centre at All Hallows Hospital in Ditchingham is to be taken over by the Christian Conference Trust (CCT), it was announced this week.

Subject to final agreement, the CCT will take over from November 1 of this year, and the Centre formerly known as St Gabriel's will be re-named the Belsey Bridge Conference Centre as it lies adjacent to the Belsey Bridge Road.

The Community of All Hallows (CAH) has hailed the transfer as a good move, as they believe it will allow the Centre to “realise its full potential.”

Mother Elizabeth of the Community of All Hallows said: “We have built up the Conference Centre from its origin 19 years ago to the point where it provides conference facilities to a wide range of church and community groups from East Anglia and beyond.

“The Centre has gained a reputation for providing guests with a warm welcome in pleasant peaceful surroundings. The Community consider that the transfer will allow the Conference Centre to benefit from the Trust's professional competence and experience so that it does even better in future.

“We will continue to support the Conference Centre as neighbours and in our prayers, and we are going to invest a substantial sum in a launch programme and refurbishment of the Centre by CCT. I am especially thankful to the staff who have done so much to make it the welcoming and well-run facility it is today.”

The CCT already successfully runs the widely-known conference centres of High Leigh in Hertfordshire and The Hayes in Derbyshire. These Centres have been progressively improved and expanded, and provide a widely-used resource to the church and the wider community.

Brian Cupples, general manager of the Christian Conference Trust, said: “This is an exciting opportunity for us to build on the work already undertaken by the Community of All Hallows and take the Centre forward into the future, for the benefit of the whole Christian community and the wider community in the region. The Centre has many excellent attributes and is a secret that many churches and organisations in the surrounding area have not yet discovered. Our thanks go to the Community of All Hallows for their generosity.”