Cancer charity celebrates success with office move

Jun 24 2008 by Alan Weston, Liverpool Daily Post

LIVERPOOL’S flagship cancer research charity is moving to new premises later this year after outgrowing its present site.

The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation has been based in London Road for the past decade.

However, it is due to move the majority of its services to a new 14,000 sq ft building at Liverpool Innovation Park in the autumn.

The current Roy Castle centre will be kept on as a lung cancer research centre.

The building was taken over by the University of Liverpool in February 2004 and relaunched as a specialised £20m cancer research centre.

The charity said the expansion meant it had put its debt problems – which at one point threatened its future existence – behind it.

The Foundation’s chief executive, Mike Unger, said: “We have outgrown the Roy Castle Centre and need to move into other premises. The research will carry on, but we have been so successful in terms of our services we need to pull people together from all over Liverpool.

“We have literally run out of space and this is a very positive move for us.

“We are in a much healthier situation than we were six years ago, and another 40 staff have been taken on in the last 18 months.

“If we had carried on as we were, we would have gone bust. Now, thanks to strong leadership and good housekeeping, we are making a small profit.”

Among the services to be run from the new centre, which has yet to be named, will be a helpline for the charity’s smoking cessation teams, along with fundraising and administration.

The Roy Castle lung cancer patient care network runs 26 patient and carer support groups across the UK, and operates a free lung cancer telephone helpline enabling callers to access details of local lung cancer nurse specialists.

The foundation draws in £3m a year in grants and donations and it grants £1.5m out for research into the early detection of lung cancer.

Professor Ray Donnelly, founder and president of the Foundation, said: “The important thing is the current building, which was built for lung cancer research, will continue. However we have got too big for the administration, fundraising, and tobacco control staff.

“The university will now have more opportunity to move in other cancer specialists, creating a wonderful centre for cancer research.

“It’s a sign of our growing success and stability that we can make this move. We have got through a difficult period to get where we are now.”

The centre on London Road was officially opened in May, 1998, by Sir Cliff Richard, who was a close friend of the late Roy Castle and is an avid supporter of the foundation and its work.

It was bought by Liverpool University for £3.1m in 2003, partly to clear the charity’s debts and build up resources for the future.

A spokeswoman for the university said: “The Roy Castle administration office will be moving from its site on London Road to enable more researchers to work alongside each other and further enhance cancer research in Liverpool.”

alanweston