St Peter's House Project and METRO Merge

HIV charities come together for a stronger future together

On Tuesday evening St Peter's House Project's Chair, Heather Loxely, and METRO Charity's Chair, Gwen Bryan, signed an agreement that marks the culmination of a robust process that sees our two charities merge.

St Peter's House Project (SPH) will merge into METRO's HIV Domain, to become METRO SPH. SPH's services will continue as a distinct part of the METRO family of services, providing support to people living with HIV in Surrey and West Sussex.

During the celebration, our Deputy CEO, Andrew Evans, reflected on our common heritage, growing from helplines to service delivery organisations supporting people living with HIV.

Heather spoke of the journey of SPH, from a period of modernising and through cuts in funding, to looking to streamline costs whilst maintaining service delivery, and how pleased they were finding an organisation like METRO to consider merging with.

Sue Lea, Director at SPH shared their founding principles of offering support without prejudice, and how they are now the only organisation specialising in HIV support in Surrey.

Our Chair, Gwen Bryan, highlighted her own experiences in supporting people living with HIV and reflected on how having been through a merger with METRO before, coming from Positive Parenting and Children (PPC), she is confident we will work well together.

METRO SPH will continue to work out of their Reigate and Horsham bases.

The merge formally comes into effect from Friday 1st November 2019.