Our History

10 Count Boxing Gym CIO’ is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (Charity no. 1191711) which was formally registered with the Charity Commission in October 2020. The gym, now known as ‘10 Count Centre’ was originally started in 2015 by its founders Richard ‘Max’ Maxwell and Lee Jones who saw the high levels of need across the community and lack of support available for local people. After registering as a CIO, the charity moved to a new and more permanent base in September 2021 at Winchester Halls, a former Methodist Church in Bentilee. Bentilee is a huge post-war social housing estate on the east side of Stoke-on-Trent with endemic issues of deprivation but has also been the site of various urban renewal programmes.

10 Count Centre now delivers a range of social inclusion and wellbeing programmes that target and support young people with special educational needs, people from low-income families, those involved in the criminal justice system, people who are not in education, employment or training and people experiencing health inequalities. It has developed Winchester Halls into a substantial community centre, and it now provides a series of outreach youth projects across the wider Stoke area.