A WEE COUNTY community group is hoping to use a recent grant award to help open a café which everyone in the area can enjoy.

The Tullibody Community Development Trust (TCDT) was recently awarded £5,000 from the Gannet Foundation, the charitable arm of the Alloa Advertiser's parent company, which sent out a plea asking community groups to get in touch about funding.

Awards were decided by a board of trustees, with a total of 50 local groups benefitting from a total pot of £300,000.

Janette McGowan, chairperson of the group, said: "This grant will be used to turn our kitchen space into a café/bistro.

"It will hopefully provide somewhere for young and old to pop in and have a cuppa and a cake and meet with friends. It will help to create a social hub within our community centre."

The group has a number of plans in the pipeline, most of which will be discussed at an upcoming meeting where members will be told about them in detail.

Janette continued: "We're holding our next members' meeting on Saturday, February 23, to provide an update on the options our consultants drew up for the public consultation.

"We hope the community are excited by the results. We're also working on our business plan to submit to the Scottish Land Fund for the grant to progress our community asset transfer of the Civic Centre and we've still to have a valuation of the centre and park carried out.

"Meanwhile, we are still recruiting volunteers if anyone wants to help at the centre even just a couple of hours per week."

In addition, an estimate has also been given for work to be completed on the roof of the town's sports hall, which they hope will allow them to open it.

"Our roofer's estimate has been passed to the council, so fingers crossed we get approval for the roofer to go ahead and repair the Sports Hall roof and enable us to apply for the licence to open it for our community," Janette added.

"The funding for the repair was generously donated by our members with match funding of £1,000 provided by Tabhair Trust."