Volunteers at Whiteinch Community centre are celebrating 10 years since their doors opened to the public.

The centre, which was built with help from the Big Lottery Fund, is community led and provides leisure, employability and health facilities for the public.

Their anniversary comes as the Big Lottery Fund launches a new multi-million pound initiative to help other Scottish communities buy, manage or develop their local buildings or land.

As part of the fund, £45 million will become available between now and 2020 to help support the creation of projects such as community centres throughout the Scotland.

Groups can apply for grants from £10,000 to £1 million and, where needed, will receive professional technical support and advice from mentors to turn their projects ideas into reality.

Maureen McGinn, Big Lottery Fund Scotland Chair, said: “This new funding will allow even more communities to follow in the footsteps of organisations like the Whiteinch Centre, which, this year, reaches its own key milestone – the tenth anniversary of community ownership.

“We want to help communities achieve their ambitions. They might have a piece of land or a building that they would like to do more with, so we want them to come to us for help.

“We recognise that there is strong appetite in communities across Scotland to purchase and develop local assets which can bring huge, lasting benefits such as sustaining jobs and helping connect people to activities and services.”

The Whiteinch Centre first received National Lottery funding in 2003 to help with the costs of building, and has since received a further five grants to develop the centre into the community asset that is today.

Sonny Sunga, 62, from Govan, has used the centre since 2014. He said: “I came to do a course from Glasgow Uni which was delivered here. After I finished I was asked to stay on as a volunteer and do another course about the third sector and volunteering.

“It was a great, life changing experience. They allowed me to start teaching my own Italian class so now I’ve got a lots of students who come and chat in Italian. The experience I’ve had and the friends I’ve made has been invaluable."

Rosemary Robertson, centre manager at Calton Learning and Heritage Centre, attended the launch to find out more about expanding their current building.

“We’re Lottery funded for the build and the revenue but the building is needing to grow and expand”, she explained.

“There’s so much demand for use so we’re keen to learn more about the funding and find out if there’s potential for us to expand.”

Between now and 2020, the Big Lottery Fund in Scotland has £250 million to support people and communities dealing with challenging circumstances. Community Assets is the third and final stream of funding to open following the launch of Improving Lives and Community Led in November 2015.