Wroxton & Balscote Community Web Site

Editor Richard Woollacott: Email- editorATwroxton.org.uk (Replace AT with the @ sign to save me spam!)

Balscote Village Hall Project

 

Who are we

 

A small community / village in the Parish of Wroxton, but 2.5miles away from the Wroxton Village Hall. We are in fact the only village for miles around without a village hall. We have circa 80 houses and an electorate of 180.

 

Our problem is compounded by the fact that we have lost the Methodist Chapel this year, the present tenants of the village pub are leaving next spring (and who will take on a pub these days) and the church is to lose its vicar again in the New Year. We are in danger of the village being unsustainable in Local Council Terms.

 

In 1996 it was agreed by the vast majority of the village that we needed and should therefore attempt to build a village hall. 12 years later the same determination is still evident despite many set backs.

 

The Planners at the local Council insisted in the late 90’s that the proposed village hall should be stone under slate and should have air conditioning. In doing so they effectively killed the then project as costs came out at a staggering £350,000. Two attempts were made to secure lottery funding and despite The Lottery agreeing that we had a well-designed project and business plan funding was refused. We were considered to be too affluent an area and other priorities took precedent.

 

Throughout the 12 years we have continued fund raising through a variety of events. The total raised has been in excess of £25,000 although professional fees and land clearance costs have reduced reserves currently to circa £14,000. In addition we have the land given and valued at £50,000 and access over Brewery land for a fee of £1000.

 

A brief history of the project

 

1997 – Committee formed to start project. Village surveyed and vast majority agreed

 

1998 – Land identified at rear of The Butchers Arms and given to the village. Negotiations commenced with The Brewery to obtain access to land across Pub car park. Architect appointed.

 

1999 – Project discussed with CDC, ORCC, and Parish Council. £10,000 raised in village

 

2000 – Completed drawings and planning consent obtained. Insistence by CDC that hall should be air-conditioned added substantially to cost of project. Further £7000 fund raised in village

 

2001 – Parish Council promised £1500 and CDC £10,000. Land ownership formally transferred to Parish Council and Charity status obtained.

 

2002 – Application made to The Community Fund (Lottery) for £270,000. Rejected although Regional Committee agreed project desirable. Lack of funds cited.             Approached a further 75 organisations, including help from MEP, but no help offered.

 

2003 –Re-looked costs and reapplied to The Community Fund for £211,000. Refused funding as village not a disadvantaged area. Fund made several valueless suggestions such as forming a Car Pool to access nearby facilities in other villages

 

2004 – Cleared site and proceeded with fund raising

 

2005 – Renewed planning permission, fenced site, planted hedge and seeded area

 

2006 – Through Parish Council obtained Marquee for Village events

 

2008 -In September we placed a further project before the Planning Dept at Cherwell District Council. Once again they objected on the grounds that our plan (a wooden construction) was not in keeping with the conservation nature of the village and was near to a Grade II listed building. Fortunately the Elected Members ruled in our favour considering the Community needs to be more important than conservation matters. We are now, however engaged in producing external finish options to hopefully satisfy The Planners.

 

The Future

 

Apart from sorting our way through “Planning Conditions” we are now to start actively seeking help with the financing of this community centre. Apart from the land and our current asset of £14,000 we have a grant from CDC of £10,000 and The Parish Council have placed £5,500 aside for our build costs. We estimate costs in the total region of £100 - £115,00 – a much more realistic and achievable figure.

 

Breakdown of costs and an artist’s impression of the Hall (Double Click to enlarge)

Proposed Balscote Village Hall

 

Chairman’s Report

May 2009.

 

This time last year the committee had just submitted our application for a timber framed Village Hall to Cherwell District Council for planning approval and we were hopeful for a result by July 2008.

In fact, by July we had heard that the Planning Officer did not much like our application for a timber framed hall and she was intending to recommend rejection. In order to discuss and hopefully resolve their concerns, we set up a meeting with planners which took place on the 18th July. Attending were Laura Bailey and Bob Duxbury from the Planning Department and Dave Pounds, Bob Jesson, John Simms and Terry Allen from our side. At that meeting, Laura Bailey was of a strong view that our old application for a stone building with slate roof was the only likely acceptable solution. We explained that for a village of 75 houses that was a completely unaffordable design. Mr Duxbury, trying to mediate towards a solution pointed out that the most objectionable part of our new application was the half round log cladding that we were proposing at that time. We suggested wany edge as an alternative, but he favoured instead a modern well engineered solution and that ought to be our focus.  It was agreed that John Simms, our agent, should work with the Planners to come to an agreement. We therefore dedicated our time to that solution and concluded that feathered edge tongue and grooved cladding in Larch was the perfect match to that ideal.

Our revised application therefore went to committee in September 2008 and despite the earlier meeting and our attempt at compliance with their wishes the planners still recommended rejection. However, the application received massive support from George Reynolds and he managed to sway sufficient of his fellow elected members to such an extent that finally they overturned the Planner’s recommendation and we received planning approval on 23rd September 2008. However, it was a close run thing.

The approval was received along with 9 conditions. Many of these conditions were identical to those applied to our previous consent for a stone building. Some had already been met, such as perimeter fencing and hedging. Some seemed inappropriate as they related to a car park which was not part of our new application. The most relevant condition was that our agent, John Simms should agree the design of external cladding. Consequently on 7th January John Simms wrote to Cherwell District Council on our behalf with a comprehensive response to all 9 conditions and planning note 1. This included samples of the feathered edge tongue and grooved cladding in Larch which was produced by Malcolm Messenger.  

Despite a number of chases by John Simms, the Planning Officer did not give a response to our letter; indeed, at the time of writing this report we have still received no official response to that January letter. On Friday 13th March John Simms did manage to speak to the Planning officer and she indicated a dislike toward the cladding solution preferring instead wany edge boarding. On Monday 16th March she sent John a picture of Wany edge cladding and said it was the solution the committee preferred. However, Monday 23rd March 2009 was the deadline, by which time we would have to lodge an appeal against planning conditions. So despite having no written response we were forced to set an appeal in motion. The appeal was despatched by courier to their office in Bristol and arrived on the day of the deadline with John Simms working over the weekend to achieve this. The cost was £1292. We have had confirmation that the grounds for our appeal are legitimate and the appeal is proceeding.

We also wrote a letter of complaint to the Director of Planning at CDC. We voiced the view that mal-administration by the Planning Department forced us into an appeal which we did not want and cost our charity money we can ill afford. We have had a first response which was very defensive of their position and at the time of writing this report, we await a response to our rebuff of their initial response. We have suggested another face-to-face meeting which resulted in resolution of these 9 conditions would lead us to withdraw our appeal and save their administrative effort.

 

At the beginning of January 2009 we launched a new initiative for funding. At that time we calculated that to get the hall we have specified with all the associated services we required £126,000. We had already received pledges from Cherwell District Council for £10,000 and £5,500 from Wroxton & Balscote Parish Council. In January Bob Jesson had already been in touch with a few further potential sources for funds and continued to pursue outcomes from them. Jon Davies had searched through all the Charitable Trusts in the UK and selected 25 that were most likely to be sympathetic with our aims. These trusts were all contacted by letter by me with varying results. Additionally, Michael Robarts volunteered to contact a couple of trusts with which he had personal contacts. The outcome of all that activity is that at the date of writing this report we have promises or cheques totalling £114,750. It should be pointed out that the lions share, a massive £80,000 has come from one Oxfordshire based Trust who wish to remain anonymous although we still await written confirmation of their pledge. It should also be noted that the local landfill agents, SITA are likely to give us a reasonable sum for internal works and all the outstanding balance of £11,250 is for internals.

During this year our chosen supplier for the hall has changed his supplier of materials and construction and we now have a written quotation (at a returnable fee of £1,150) which is slightly less costly than the figure used to calculate our initial requirement of £126,000. Consequently we are even closer to a full funding position.

It is also intended to hold a ‘bumper’ Fete this year in aid of the Hall and the Church, to see if we can’t give a final boost to our fund raising efforts. The big Fete was very much the desire of John Hedges who we all miss terribly.

 

In direct support of our push for funds, Snowy used his expertise with information systems to launch our own website www.balscote.com . This site has been extremely well received and is constantly updated to keep it alive. It contains information on every aspect of the hall but extends to many other topics of our lives here in Balscote. Our grateful thanks go to Snowy for his hard work, dedication and enthusiasm for the Balscote web site.

 

The design of the hall has been enhanced slightly during the year and the latest image is printed above. A new and potentially cheaper footings design is now proposed. We plan to heat the hall by means of a ground source heat pump and have applied for 50% funding through the National Lottery.

 

During the year Dave Pounds left the pub and resigned as committee member and Treasurer and our thanks go to Dave for his hard work over the 12 years he was with us. Andrew Snow was co-opted into the position of Treasurer and has taken on the role with huge enthusiasm. We also welcomed Ken & Eileen Thomson as the new tenants of the Butchers Arms and Eileen has joined the Fete committee and Ken has been co-opted onto the Village Hall Committee.

 

 

Finally my thanks must go to all the committee members for their continued support and these thanks are extended to the whole village for their support and encouragement.

 

Terry Allen

21st May 2009.