A disused warehouse could be transformed into a community centre.

Charity Tender Heart is hoping to gain planning permission to turn the building in Third Avenue, Plaistow, into a place where help and support for people with learning disabilities and mental health issues will run alongside training and learning opportunities for the whole community.

Trustee Isaac Mulondo said: “The plan is not to have our activities scattered around Newham but to have everything under one roof, where people can come to.

“We also want to offer services to people who don’t want to come out and slowly invite them into the community centre to meet other people.”

Isaac said considering which services are needed in Newham helped inform what the charity hopes to provide.

“We looked into the health needs of Newham as a whole to see what Newham was trying to promote healthwise and to see what we can do to support them,” he said. “A key example is Esol classes [English for speakers of other languages]. The amount of people who are not English who come into Newham is really high. By providing Esol classes, you can teach them to speak English and equip them to go further in life, whether that is to start a career, fill out forms, hone their interviewing skills, or anything like that.”

The charity plans to open the centre five days a week and also offer rooms and halls for hire to other organisations. Trustees hope to submit the necessary planning permission forms within the next few weeks and have been asking residents to show their support by signing a petition calling for a centre to open.

More than 200 people have leant their names to the campaign so far.

For more information, visit tenderheartcommunitycenter.co.uk