Community group Coalville CAN is officially opening its headquarters in the town later this month - after equipping it with unwanted office material from local companies.

The latest building to donate is the closed down Schneider office in Ashby.

Coalville CAN's Deana Wildgoose spotted the building was shutting down and e-mailed one of the directors to see if there was anything they were getting rid of that they did not need.

The director replied and said there was a lot.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Deana and a team from Coalville CAN started to collect furniture before it was skipped.

Landfill was the alternative so chairs, tables, shelves and cupboards were all rescued.

The plan was to use them in CAN HQ in the centre of Coalville, close to the clock tower.

Now there will be an official opening on May 20-21 at the building in Memorial Square.

It is a space for community, creativity and enterprise - and a building that, later this year, will be able to be bought by the community, for the community through a share offer.

As a Community Benefit Society, Coalville C.A.N, a Community Cooperative, is one of the few organisations that can do that.

It is where local people and others, can invest in their own community and get local assets into local hands, forever.

As owners they become members of Coalville CAN and decide what it does.

Coalville C.A.N HQ is owned by World Habitat, whose roots go back to a local veteran Peter Elderfield who was homeless after the war and ended up creating what came to be East Midlands Homes and the Social Housing Foundation, which later became World Habitat.

He was passionate about solving housing issues for local people.

His legacy lives on. World Habitat have now moved to Leicester, which could have meant an empty building.

But they let Coalville CAN and its partner organisation THINK FC use it. - which they have done since last year.

"Without this we wouldn't have been able to get started at all," said Deana .

Current plans include. having a local young person employed on the Kickstart scheme and co-ordinating the development of the top floor.

The ground floor is going to see another young kickstarter employed in the project.

The plants were donated by PlantPlan in Leicester, settees by individuals, display cases from Marsdens in Loughborough which form the basis of the Made in the National Forest shop.

Some spare rescued furniture also travelled on and is now in the George Smith Community Hub, a local ambulance station and a local nursery