A youth cafe is to be opened in Maidstone town centre, after 10 years of campaigning.

Maidstone Youth Forum has raised £65,000 - enough to renovate the derelict former Kashew shoe shop in Maidstone High Street.

And it’s now full steam ahead for the project as work to renovate the building began this week.

Julia Fraser, Maidstone council’s community and youth development officer, said: “The young people in Maidstone have been asking for somewhere to go for more than 10 years and we have never quite managed to make it work.

“We thought we’d give it one last push and the youth forum have really been working very hard to make it happen. We just hope it all comes to fruition.”

The building, which lies in a yard just off the High Street, is owned by the council and has been derelict for about two years.

The youth forum raised the £65,000 through donations, council handouts and a £40,000 windfall grant from the Government’s Youth Capital Fund.

The building will have a youth cafe and meeting rooms, with offices above. It is hoped the office rents will eventually make the venture self-sustaining.

Maidstone council has offered to give the building to the forum rent-free for five years to make sure the venture is a success.

Mrs Fraser said the youth centre - to be named Switch - would hopefully put an end to the perception that young people hang around the town centre, causing trouble.

“It is definitely more of a perception than reality,” she said.

“We know that young people are really not doing a whole lot wrong, but we hope that giving teenagers a place to go, should they choose to use it, will help change those perceptions.”