News

This month’s blog comes from Kat Pulford, Community Manager at St Elizabeth’s Centre in Much Hadham, who employ over 650 people - half of whom are living in Harlow. St Elizabeth's is a national charity founded in 1903 supporting around 200 children and adults of all ages with epilepsy and other complex medical conditions. Over the past 117 years, St Elizabeth's has grown and developed and it now offers: non-maintained special school for both boarders and day students a specialist further education college domiciliary care for college learners residential care with nursing for 102 adults across 12 purpose-built bungalows a comprehensive day opportunities programme for residents and day clients 24 hour [...]

When I joined Harlow Art Trust as Artistic Director two years ago, I knew the value of public art in theory, but it took a global pandemic for me to understand it in practice. Artistic Director Kate Harding with Auguste Rodin’s ‘Eve’ (1897) in the Water Gardens, Harlow Town Centre. Harlow’s sculpture collection is a result of the Second World War: the last truly global crisis in modern memory. At the outset, it was an imaginative and ambitious attempt to rebuild communities. The sculptures were a way to create public spaces people would enjoy using and sharing with their neighbours. They reflected the optimism of the post-war period and projected [...]

Public Health England (PHE) is among many organisations at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19. There is hardly anyone within the organisation either not working on or supporting the totally unprecedented operation to tackle the virus which has dominated media headlines for many weeks now. At the tip of that effort are the hundreds of PHE scientists working with partners nationally and globally who are striving to contain and then eliminate the virus on a scale never seen before. Running parallel to that incredible work, is the programme which will deliver PHE’s new world-leading public health science campus at the former GSK site at Harlow. With state-of-the-art facilities and [...]

This month's blog comes from Sarah Thompson, CEO of St Clare Hospice, a local charity which cares for hundreds of people across West Essex and the East Hertfordshire border each year. This month we really should be celebrating; it’s St Clare Hospice’s 30th birthday, and we have just received an ‘Outstanding’ rating from the Care Quality Commission. However, due to coronavirus, we have put plans to celebrate on hold. Now is not the time. Instead we have had to launch an urgent fundraising appeal in a bid to offset the projected income loss of up to £100,000 from cancelling and postponing many of our key fundraising events this year. This amount [...]

Santhosh Gowda is the Chairman of Strawberry Star Group who are working on a new residential scheme HQ (Harlow Quarter) in Harlow town centre.  These are certainly exciting times for Harlow and we are proud to be part of this new chapter for the town! A vibrant Harlow town centre with upgraded amenities and facilities, including entertainment, new retail, cafes and bars, green spaces along with modern residential units in the heart of the town is soon set to become a reality. Over the past few years, our property company Strawberry Star has been creating new vibrant neighbourhoods through residential schemes in London and the commuter belt towns. Now, we are [...]