Ian Jankinson, 62, is the chairman of Blunsdon St Andrew Parish Council, which runs the new Redhouse Community Centre. He lives in St Andrew’s Ridge and is a married dad of two and a grandfather of five

LIKE a lot of people who volunteer, Ian Jankinson is a great believer in communities.

“Community is raising the profile of where you live so you can enjoy where you live," says Ian.

“People who talk about good community spirit are people who are proud of where they live and enjoy where they live, and something like a community centre enables them to.

“It makes me proud to think that we’re at least providing some form of community for those who have lived in Redhouse for eight or nine years and seen nothing apart from maybe a Tesco and an overflowing litter bin.

“Redhouse has been there for nearly ten years now, and a community ten years without a heart and without somewhere to come together and celebrate is not very good.

“I like to try and make a difference. The only thing that really makes me angry is injustice, and if I can stop injustice that makes me happy.

“The people of Redhouse were sold a pup. If you go back and look at the brochures that came with the houses they bought, they talked about a community centre, they talked about a church, they talked about a pub, they talked about a village centre. There’s never been a centre of the community.”

Or at least, there hasn’t been one until the recent opening of the community centre, following years of work by the parish council.

“It goes back quite a long way,” said Ian, who joined the parish council nine years ago and is in his third year as chairman.

“When Redhouse was built there was always a space set aside for community use – maybe a church or a pub. We endeavoured quite often to try and get that space to build something for the community in Redhouse because there was nothing there. As Redhouse was growing, there were no shops, there was no community centre, there was no focal point, no pub.”

Local councillor Vera Tomlinson negotiated a sensible price for the community centre’s plot with developer Crest Nicholson. The newly-built structure’s first incarnation was to accommodate local reception and Year One classes while the new school at Tadpole Garden Village was completed.

The parish council won the bidding process to run the centre and has already ploughed in much of the £12,000 it had set aside to begin the task.

“It’s a beautiful new building,” Ian said.

“There’s satisfaction and pride that we won the bid. There’s been a massive demand for something in Redhouse. It’s been great to invest the money to ensure we provide it, and within a month it’s been extremely successful.”

In that short time it’s been adopted by an array of groups.

“Slimming World have made us a hub, and they have three big sessions a week. The WI use us, we’ve got a martial arts group in on Sundays, we’ve got two churches that use it.

“The uniform groups such as Brownies, Rainbows and Guides will be using it from January and we also have three mother and toddler groups.”

There’s also free wifi and the parish council is in the process of installing a sound system.

The legacy of Tadpole Gardens Village Academy is a log cabin nearby which was used by the head teacher as an office during the school’s time on the site. Ian believes it would make a good therapy room or something similar.

Ian was born in Kingsbridge, Devon. His mother worked in retail and his father was a gardener. Ian has a brother and a sister.

The importance of helping others is something he learned early on.

“My parents always seemed to adopt waifs and strays, so I always had sort of uncles and aunties who weren’t really uncles and aunties, who were down on their luck. We gave them the spare bedroom or whatever to help them for a while.”

Ian trained in Newcastle as a teacher of English, drama and art but went into retail and never looked back.

By the time he retired when still shy of his 50th birthday, he was head of personnel for PC World, having recruited and looked after the people who took the firm from a relatively small London-based business to national brand.

He and his wife then ran a Blunsdon boarding house for more than a decade.

As well as being drawn to nurturing and development roles in his professional life, Ian began volunteering, initially with his children’s sports clubs.

He coached gymnastics at regional level and was the inaugural chairman of Swindon Sports Forum, the organisation set up in 2007 to promote and provide sporting opportunities as one of Swindon Borough Council’s 50 Promises initiative. Ian is still the forum’s vice-chairman.

The parish council is doing all it can to promote the new community centre and encourage local groups to come forward and ask about using it.

“As a volunteer I’ve always taken great satisfaction in doing something for the community,” said Ian.

“There was massive demand and it’s really great to bring the community together. Rather than being disparate they’ve got a focal point now. You could call it the heart of the community.”

Ian’s advice to anybody with time to offer in any kind of volunteer work is simple – do it. For those with time to spare but who don’t know where to start, he recommends the Volunteer Centre in John Street as the first port of call, as it matches people with projects.

He added: “The only reward for volunteering is the pleasure of seeing things work and work better.”