MS therapy centre seeks new home

A vital charitable centre that supports people with long-term health conditions is desperately seeking a new home to better support its clients and fulfil its growth plans.

Caroline Aird, Chief Executive at South West MS Therapy Centre, said while there was “no imminent danger” to the organisation, it had been seeking more modern premises for around three years without any success.

The building the charity occupies now is a listed building, which brings with it logistical challenges and would make it problematic even if the organisation did want to make alterations to it.

Ms Aird said while she had seen some other buildings that could possibly work, they all fell down on the amount of car parking space the organisation needs.

That aspect is extremely important because many of its users have mobility issues, travel from as far afield as Somerset or Dorset, and also often have adapted vehicles that require adequate space. Finding a new home that is predominantly, if not entirely, at ground-floor level is also important, Ms Aird added.

“Having a more modern space with parking is on our wish list,” she said.

“Where we are now is beautiful, but in terms of what it offers inside it is limited and expensive.”

Ms Aird said the organisation had been in its current location for more than 25 years, but had sold the building around three years ago and had been renting it ever since.

That move was aimed at giving it more flexibility to move to a new base, but nothing completely suitable has yet been found.

The chief executive said heating the property had become increasingly expensive, and while it benefitted from an accessible location near to the M5, the space provided a range of daily logistical challenges and curbed its growth.

“The limitations are the number of rooms on the ground floor,” she said.

“There is one large room, and if we use that for a gym, then we can’t use it for pilates and yoga at the same time, and so we are often moving equipment around, which is not ideal as we need space for particular purposes.”

Ms Aird said the charity ran sessions such as courses on fatigue management for people who live with MS or other conditions of which fatigue is a feature.

“We know there is a growing need as people are living longer with long-term conditions, so there is clearly a role for our organisation,” she said.

Ms Aird said the charity relied largely on fundraising, donations, grants and corporate donations (which recently included cleaning product firm Smol), but that it tried to secure income in other ways too.

“We do our best to monetise the building we are renting now, but we are not in the room-hiring business, we’re focused on providing people with MS [and other conditions] oxygen therapy,” she said.

“We are the only provider in Devon who offers this at a charitable rate, and some people come from as far away as Chard.

Ms Aird said some people who came for the oxygen therapy had different illnesses or conditions to MS, including cancer and neurophysiological conditions, like Parkinson’s.

Ms Aird noted it was considered a complementary therapy but some of her organisation’s members had been “coming for years and benefitting from it”.

The organisation is currently in a site on the former Digby hospital in Exeter, close to the city’s Ikea store and the Tesco store on Russell Way.