Gymnasts at a Wrexham gymnastics club are set to benefit from improved coaching standards, thanks to National Lottery funding from the Sports Council for Wales.

A £1,000 Community Chest grant will help Abbey Road Acro to send several volunteers on acrobatic gymnastics coaching courses.

The British Gymnastics affiliated club, which trains at Wrexham Industrial Estate, currently holds eight training sessions a week for its 160 junior members, all of whom are under 16. They want to treble that number of training sessions to 24 per week, which will require four coaches per session and therefore more volunteers to gain coaching qualifications.

Jackie Goode of Abbey Road Acro said, "Our aim at the moment is coach development and raising the standard of coaching for all our participants. We want to keep moving coaches up the levels and recruiting more suitable assistant coaches so that all the gymnasts in the club get the chance to progress."

Since the inception of the Sports Council for Wales’ Community Chest scheme in 1999, communities across the length and breadth of Wales have been investing heavily in sports and physical activity projects.

Chair of the Sports Council for Wales, Philip Carling, said:

"Community Chest has been and continues to be a huge success and is very popular throughout Wrexham. The increase in funding and the greater scope of the scheme will increase its effectiveness.

"Panels based in each of the 22 local authorities in Wales hold the purse strings and have delegated authority to award grants to worthwhile projects. We want to hear of bright ideas and projects that will get more people in Wrexham more active, more often."

As a result of the popularity and undoubted success of the scheme, the Sports Council for Wales is raising the level of grant. Organisations keen to develop sport and physical activity in Wales can now receive up to £1000 for a qualifying project over a 12 month period.

The scope of the scheme has also been widened. Grants have traditionally been awarded to sports clubs and sporting bodies. Now most organisations seeking to develop physical activity and sporting projects will be eligible for an award.

The Community Chest has recently been infiltrating additional areas of work such as the voluntary sector (e.g. Voluntary Youth Clubs, Women’s Institute) and the workplace, as well as continuing to support projects in the health and education arenas. So while funding the local football club might get the younger members of the community moving, backing a walking group will encourage more adults to get active.