Village Hall Refurbishment

The Village Hall dates from 1910 and the last major work on it was done in the 1960s. It now needs a major overhaul to make it suitable for 21st century users.  It has a lot of failings due to its age. Principally it is cold, gloomy and has poor toilets and kitchen. Here are pictures of what it looks like at present.

Plans

The village hall committee has produced plans to refurbish the hall and make it warmer, more attractive and welcoming and bring back into use areas at the back which are currently too dilapidated to use.  This will enable it to be home to a bigger range of activities and services to support our community.

The plans include installing photovoltaic cells (solar panels) on the roof so that we can generate our own electricity.  This will reduce our electricity costs and we will be able to feed any excess generated back into the national grid for which we will be paid. 

You can read a paper detailing our requirements here and you can see the plans here.

The Parish Council has supported the project by funding surveys and professional fees totalling over £11,000 to enable us to get to this stage.

Funding the project

The structural work will cost in the region of £240,000. To that must be added fitting out, professional fees and a margin for contingencies. Altogether we expect the cost to be nearly £300,000. As at 26 January the total raised stands at just over £247,000. Thank you very much to all our generous donors.

Local Appeal

At the end of September Hall Chairman, John Scott, wrote to every household about our local appeal. This followed up an insert in the August Hill & Valley. We have done very well with savings, grants and fund raising events but there's more to raise and we need some serious giving! The appeal has got off to a good start with over £50,000 raised so far from over 90 donors. Thank you very much. The hall is a registered charity so donations qualify for Gift Aid if you are a UK taxpayer. This increases the value of your gift by 25% and you will get some extra tax relief ifyou pay tax at 40% or 50%.

Please dig deep and help us if you can.  You can give online at https://mydonate.bt.com/charities/longparishvillagehall There's no need to log in if you don't want to; just click on Donate Now and then follow the I'm not registered tab.
We are very grateful to the people who have already donated and to the Parochial Church Council who gave us £4000 in addition to the £3,735 from the fete.  Thank you all.

If you prefer to write a cheque please make it payable to Longparish Village Hall, complete a Gift Aid form and send them to our Treasurer, Jeremy Barber, Queen Anne Cottage, Forton, ANDOVER, Hants, SP11 6NU.

Savings

The hall committee has been saving hard for some years with support from the fete. We have accumulated £25,000 towards the project.  In addition to the help referred to above, the Parish Council has also saved a further £35,000 towards the project.  Together that amounts to around £60,000. 

Grants

In April and May 2011 we heard the good news that Test Valley Borough Council and Hampshire County Council will help with grants of £18,750 and £12,500. In August we were awarded grants totalling £81,000 by two trusts. Sadly we don't qualify for Lottery grants so we'll have to raise pretty well all of the rest ourselves.

NatWest CommunityForce have awarded our project £6,275. Thank you very much to everyone who voted for us. Other local winners include Naomi House and Hants Air Ambulance.

Vitacress Charitable Fund have awarded us £1937 which is fantastic. The money will go towards the cost of curtains and blinds, a hot cupboard and a commercial dishwasher.  No more carting home dirty dishes for washing up after events! Thank you very much.

Fund raising

The hall committee and user groups are holding a series of events to raise funds. You can see details here

Consultation

The plans have been developed in consultation with user groups and parishioners. They were finally signed off at an open meeting on 21 November and we have now invited tenders.

Questionnaires were distributed to every household in the village and village organisations were consulted to obtain our community's views on what should be done. 24% of the individual questionnaires were returned and all the organisations responded. This is an excellent response rate for a survey of this kind. Overwhelmingly people felt that heating, toilet and kitchen facilities needed improving. You can see the villagers' questionnaire here and the user groups' one here. The results of the former are here and the latter here.

More information

More information is published regularly in our parish magazine, Hill & Valley.

For further information or if you can help in any way please contact the chair of the village hall committee, John Scott on 720018 or email him, Tom Bremridge on 720689 or Maggie Barber on 720459.