At the heart of Adult Learning in the City of Brighton & Hove for 60 years

What is Friends Centre?

We have various ways to enrol. For GAE courses, they are: by post, in person or over the phone.

By Post
Fill in the booking form at the back of the brochure. Send it with a cheque or your card details and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Friends Centre, 23 Vine Street, Brighton BN1 4AG.
We can only send a receipt and Course Information Sheet if you enclose an s.a.s.e.

In Person
You can enrol in person at our office at 23 Vine Street until Friday 28th July during normal office hours. From Monday 31st July until Friday 28th August we will be open from 9.30am until 1.00pm Monday to Friday. You can pay by cash, cheque or credit/debit card. We can give you more information on courses and advise on suitability. If you have a very specific enquiry please phone 01273 689265 to check that someone who can help you will be in the office.

From Tuesday 29th August we will be open during normal office hours (9.30am until 3.00pm Monday to Friday).

By Telephone
You can enrol by telephone on 01273-689265 during office hours if you have a debit or credit card. We can also give you advice and information about courses.

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At the Friends Centre, we believe that our fees are among the most competitive in the Brighton & Hove area. Some of our courses cost as little as £2.75 per hour - when you consider that the average price of Adult Education in the area is between £4 and £5, this represents excellent value.

We offer a 30% reduction on the full fee to anyone receiving the benefits listed below. We also offer this reduced fee to anybody who is a dependant of a person receiving these benefits.

• Income Support
• Job Seeker's Allowance
• Housing or Council Tax Benefit
• Working Tax Credit
• Disabled Person's Tax Credit
• Pension Credit

We will, of course, ask for proof of entitlement. The reduced fee is shown in brackets after the course fee.

In addition to the course fee, we ask that all students pay a one-off registration fee of £5. This helps us to cover our administrative costs, but you could enrol for as many courses as you like and only pay the admin fee once. This also gives you access to our UK Online internet cafe at Ivory Place to access the internet.

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In general, we ask that the total fee be paid on enrolment. If you wish to pay by instalments you must pay at least half of the fee when you enrol, plus the registration fee, and enclose no more than two post-dated cheques for the balance. All fees must be paid in full by 1st December.

We will accept payment by debit card for fees in excess of £20 and by credit card for fees in excess of £50.

Of course, it does happen that courses can be cancelled for a variety of reasons. If the Friends Centre cancels a course before it is due to take place, you will automatically be entitled to a refund on production of your receipt. If a course is cancelled before the end of term, we will refund the portion of your fees for the cancelled part of the course.

Otherwise, we do not make refunds, except in very exceptional personal circumstances. Requests for refunds must be made in writing to the Centre Manager. If you cannot attend a course because of illness, we shall, of course, be sympathetic but a medical certificate would be required. The registration fee is not refundable, only course fees.

The Friends Centre is definitely not going to close in the foreseeable future! Government policy, however, has meant that less funding is available to Adult Education Centres like ours for courses that do not provide a qualification (so called "Personal Development" and "Community Learning"). As a result, we have to raise our fees slightly but we have kept this rise to a minimum and believe that Friends Centre still provides a value-for-money service.