Stag pledges reached £117,000, beating the £100,000 target. Bradbourne Lakes is shut until summer 2027, and £5,000 grants close at noon on 6 October.

The Stag appeal has cleared its target on the day it closed, the district’s best-known park has shut for nine months, and the Greatness centre is open with its playground and gym promised by the end of the year. Two deadlines are still to come in October. This is where each of them stands as of 1 October 2026, with the money, the dates and the links to our fuller reporting. Every source below was reread today.

The Stag: 600 pledges reach £117,000, past the £100,000 target

Sevenoaks Town Council asked residents, businesses and supporters to pledge £100,000 towards buying the freehold of the Stag Community Arts Centre, with forms due back by Thursday 1 October. On the closing day it said more than 600 pledges had come in, worth over £117,000. These are promises, not payments: the council says it will “shortly contact everyone who has pledged their support to invite them to fulfil their donation”. (Sevenoaks Town Council, 1 October 2026)

The money is the last slice of the £650,000 the district council is charging for the theatre, cinema and arts centre on London Road. The town council covers the rest with a £350,000 Public Works Loan and £200,000 of its own capital reserves, and plans to repay the loan by stopping the £27,000 annual grant it gives the Stag rather than raising the precept. No completion date has been given. The Mayor’s thanks, the funding chart and what pledgers should expect next are in The Stag: 600 pledges top £117,000; the background, including the decision on 24 August not to take the district council to court over the price, is in The Stag: £100,000 pledge appeal opens.

The £2.1m Greatness centre opened on 18 September

The Greatness Football & Community Centre at Greatness Recreation Ground, off Mill Lane, was officially opened on Friday 18 September by the Mayor of Sevenoaks, Cllr Victoria Granville, and Sevenoaks Town FC chairman Paul Lansdale. The town council says it was finished on schedule. (Sevenoaks Town Council, 21 September 2026)

The building is the football club’s new clubhouse and holds changing rooms, a kitchen, a gym area and a cafe meant for the wider public rather than only matchday crowds. An air source heat pump, solar panels and a living green wall are part of the design. The club it serves fields teams for more than 1,200 players across youth, girls and ladies, powerchair and walking football, supported by nearly 200 volunteers. (Sevenoaks Town Council, pavilion project page)

The total raised to build it is £2,130,154, on the town council’s final figures. The largest single contribution is £787,500 of Community Infrastructure Levy, the charge the district council collects from developers and spends on local infrastructure, followed by £759,100 from the Football Foundation. What was said at the opening, and the full breakdown of who paid for what, is in Greatness Football & Community Centre opens; the build itself, including the top floor the project did not expect to be able to finish, is in Greatness pavilion: £2.1m build to finish.

A £250,000 playground and outdoor gym due by the end of 2026

A separate scheme replaces the play area and outdoor gym at Greatness and moves both closer to the new building. It costs £250,000, of which £100,000 is a Community Infrastructure Levy grant, and the designs were chosen by public vote.

Nine companies tendered for the playground and eight for the gym. Residents voted through online and paper surveys and at community events, and children from local primary schools gave their views on a site visit. Both winning designs came from the playground supplier KOMPAN, taking more than 25 per cent of the playground votes and 46 per cent of the gym votes. The playground has a zipline, a trampoline, a climbing net, swings, a roundabout and a sensory play area on an animal theme; the gym is wheelchair accessible and uses variable-resistance equipment. The gym it replaces is about fifteen years old. (Sevenoaks Town Council, 16 July 2026)

At the opening the Mayor confirmed the playground, the gym and landscaping as the next phase. On 30 September the town council put a timescale on it for the first time: it is “soon installing a new playground, as well as a new outdoor gym by the end of 2026”, with landscaping planned during the autumn. No start date has been given, so treat the ground as a building site for a while yet. (Sevenoaks Town Council, 30 September 2026)

The football club’s old home, the brick Greatness Pavilion by the car park, is now empty, and the town council wants ideas for it: a function room, a small kitchen or cafe area, toilets and showers. Expression of interest forms go back by 31 December 2026 and the Community Asset Committee considers them on 25 January 2027. What the council is and is not asking for is in Greatness Pavilion up for grabs. Other play areas are listed in our guide to parks and playgrounds in Sevenoaks.

Bradbourne Lakes closed until summer 2027

Bradbourne Lakes closed to the public on 28 September 2026 for the biggest overhaul of the park in nearly 300 years, and the district council expects it to reopen by summer 2027. The southern lakes are dug out first, trees marked for removal come down at the end of October, and footpath SU11 through the park is diverted. The work restores all five lakes, repairs the sluices, bridges and lake banks, strips out accumulated silt, and adds a natural play area and an accessible toilet with baby changing. It is paid for by a £1.6 million National Lottery Heritage Fund grant and more than £500,000 the council has secured from developer contributions. (Sevenoaks District Council, Bradbourne Lakes restoration moves to next stage)

For anyone who wants to be involved rather than wait it out, the council says a programme of volunteering, community engagement, education and wellbeing activities will run alongside the building work, delivered by Kent Wildlife Trust, West Kent Mind, South East Rivers Trust and Historic England. Our fuller account of the order of work, the winter silt removal and the parking changes is in Bradbourne Lakes closed until summer 2027.

£5,000 community grants close at noon on 6 October

Sevenoaks District Council opened its Community Grants Scheme for 2027/28 on 2 September. Voluntary and charitable groups can apply for up to £5,000, and applications close at 12 noon on Tuesday 6 October 2026. (Sevenoaks District Council, Community Grants 2027/28)

Two things catch groups out. The money is not quick: successful applicants are notified in March 2027 and paid in April 2027, for projects that must finish by 31 March 2028. And the online form cannot be saved part-way through, so everything has to be gathered first. There are separate forms for grants of £1,000 and under and grants above that.

The eligibility rules, the template forms and the alternative funds for groups that need money sooner are all in our guide to the Sevenoaks community grants round.

Hollybush football goals: five signatures, open until 17 October

The only live petition in the district asks the council to put football goals on the big field at Hollybush, the recreation ground off Hollybush Lane. The petitioners argue the existing playground “mainly serves younger children, while older children currently have very limited facilities at the park”. The ePetition opened on 13 September and runs to 17 October 2026. It still had five signatures when we checked on 1 October, and the council publishes no threshold at which it must respond. (Sevenoaks District Council ePetition 64)

Anyone who lives, works or studies in the district can sign, after registering on the council’s system. What the petition says in full, and what has already changed at the site, is in Hollybush football goals: petition open until 17 October.

Closed: the community minibus has been running since March

One thread we left open earlier in the year has closed. In January the town council announced a Kent County Council Community Transport Grant for a wheelchair-accessible electric minibus, with Age UK Maidstone, Sevenoaks and Tonbridge to run it for the roughly 500 beneficiaries it supports in Sevenoaks town, including runs to the Hollybush Day Centre. (Sevenoaks Town Council, 20 January 2026)

The vehicle arrived and launched on 13 March 2026 as the Sevenoaks Community Bus, a 13-seater Ford E-Transit with wheelchair and walker access, funded by that same grant. It is available to local community groups and voluntary organisations for full-day hire at £75 plus VAT, seven days a week subject to availability, under a Section 19 permit, which is what allows a not-for-profit to carry its own members or the people it exists to support. Drivers must be aged between 30 and 70. Bookings go through the town council on 01732 459953. (Sevenoaks Town Council, hire our community bus)

What the council has never spelled out is how the Age UK day centre runs described in January sit inside that hire scheme: the hire page does not mention the charity at all. Groups should ask when they book.

Also in the past fortnight

  • Sevenoaks in Bloom won three Gold awards at the South and South East in Bloom ceremony at RHS Garden Wisley on 25 September, and the town council’s youth cafe, House in the Basement, was rated Outstanding in the It’s Your Neighbourhood category. The team is looking for volunteers for 2027 at communityeng@sevenoakstown.gov.uk. Our report: Sevenoaks in Bloom wins three golds. (Sevenoaks Town Council, 29 September 2026)
  • £260,000 for new walking signs linking the High Street, London Road, the bus station and the railway station, with routes out towards Bat & Ball and Knole Park. The grant is from Kent County Council’s bus funding; the town council adds £51,225, for £311,225 in all. Our report: Sevenoaks gets £260,000 for new signs. (Sevenoaks Town Council, 29 September 2026)
  • Tree works started at Mount Close Play Area on 24 September. The town council’s contractors are felling about half the mature poplars on the eastern side of the small woodland, under Forestry Commission felling licence 019/4277/2025, and replanting with smaller species such as cherry and apple. The western half follows once the new planting has taken. (Sevenoaks Town Council, 22 September 2026)
  • The Vine Memorial is being cleaned and repatinated, a job the council said in September would take around two weeks. Corrosion on the bronze had begun staining the granite pedestal and obscuring some of the names. (Sevenoaks Town Council, Vine Memorial restoration)
  • Nominations for the Sevenoaks Business Awards closed on 25 September; the ceremony is at the Bat & Ball Centre on 20 November. Details and the rest of the autumn diary are on our what’s on in Sevenoaks page.

Twelve community heroes were named in June

The district’s Making it Happen Community and Voluntary Awards were decided at a ceremony at St Nicholas’ Church on 18 June, after more than 100 nominations. Jan Berry took the Lifetime Achievement Award for 20 years in the voluntary sector; DAVSS won Charity Project of the Year; and the Sevenoaks Area Dementia Friendly Community took two categories, Volunteer Group of the Year and, for its Forget-me-not cafes, the older persons’ award. (Sevenoaks District Council, Local heroes recognised!)

The full list of twelve winners, and what each group actually does, is in Sevenoaks names its 2026 community heroes.

What it means for you

  • The deadlines still to come, in order: district community grants at noon on Tuesday 6 October, the Hollybush petition on 17 October, and ideas for Greatness Pavilion by 31 December.
  • If you pledged to the Stag, expect the town council to be in touch asking you to turn the pledge into a donation; the £100,000 is a fixed part of the purchase price.
  • Bradbourne Lakes is shut and footpath SU11 through it is diverted; the park is not due back until summer 2027.
  • If you run or help run a local group, the grants window is the hard one: online only, through the council’s community grants page. The Communities Team takes questions on 01732 227000 or at grants@sevenoaks.gov.uk. The same group can hire the community minibus for £75 plus VAT a day.
  • If you use Greatness Recreation Ground, the new centre is open, and the town council now says the play area and outdoor gym will be in by the end of 2026.
  • If you want to give time rather than money, the Bradbourne restoration is running a volunteer and engagement programme through Kent Wildlife Trust, West Kent Mind, South East Rivers Trust and Historic England, and the awards list doubles as a directory of groups that take volunteers, from Chipstead Sailing Club to the Forget-me-not cafes.

Sources

Image: The Vine Cricket Club Ground by Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph.