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Weston Rhyn Village Hall - Public Meeting and AGM

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21st February at 7.30 in the main hall.

 

This is an important meeting to all users of the facility and residents of the parish.

 

We need your input as to what the future holds for the hall - the costs of running the building are increasing and we are faced with yet another year of not meeting these costs. We are subsidising the events held by money from reserves and the generous support of the parish council and Local Joint Committee. But what of the future? What does the village want of the hall in the future? The fabric of the building is rapidly deteriorating and needs to be restored. The accommodation should be restructured to meet the needs of the leisure industry - such as larger hall to hold exercise classes. But do you, the user or parishioner, want these sort of classes or are you of the opinion that the hall should close and houses built on the land. All views are vital to the management committee so that we can act on your wishes - we only manage the hall on your behalf.

 

The management committee are not young and we need extra help - younger, fitter and more representative of the young worker generation who may need the hall to provide services in the future. We have plans to reorganise the accommodation to suit the needs of the village but can't proceed without your views.

 

Please attend or leave a comment here, or contact the hall caretaker on the published telephone number. This is an important notice. Please respond. AGM and public meeting 21/2/13 7.30 at the village hall. Thanks.

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I cannot attend this meeting because I am away, but, like most people in Weston Rhyn, I would dearly like to see the village Institute running on an even keel again. Questions to ask are

 

1. Why does there seem to be one crisis after another?

2. Why is there a deficit between running expenses and income?

3. Would any of the choices, such as new building, fundamentally change anything and how? 4. How do other village halls appear to manage their finance better than Weston Rhyn?

 

Hope the results of the meeting are posted here for those of us who cannot attend.

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In response to Maggie's request for information:

 

1. Because for years the Institute has been underfunded (due to inadequate room hire charges, costings not being made, lack of budgeting for maintenance items and lack of foresight regarding contracts agreed) and has had to rely on hand outs from the parish council and other funding bodies. The building is over 100 years old and has been run on a shoestring and the fabric repaired using inappropriate materials, such as polyester paint and render repairs to a lime render and plastered walls - this causing condensation and damp problems as the moisture within the building was unable to wick away through the lime finishes as they had been covered with man-made surface coverings.

 

2. Deficit caused by the above and the inadequate budgeting for running the central heating - contracts in place mean that we are paying out over £600 per month to cover the cost of heating the building in the colder months. We try to turn the heating controls down but users soon contact us by saying the building is cold. For years the room hire charges have not met the heating costs and hiring organisations won't pay more than £10 per hour for the accommodation. The institute is an old building with inadequate insulation and to put things right we need to undertake improvements to keep the building open for the next 50+ years - which have been costed at approx. £400,000. Recovering this kind of outlay from hiring out rooms at £10 per hour is never going to happen. Again, the cost of the live-in caretaker is high - but the users of the hall voted to retain this service but again are unable to pay for the privilege. We are obliged to offer wages in accordance with current ACRE agreements which do take into consideration the accommodation but we are restricted as to how much rent we can charge for this accommodation - which is far less than anyone would pay to a local authority or housing association.

 

3. A new modern building would indeed sort out the problems but again do the village want to pull down the existing building and replace it with a modern facility. Would the current users return after a building period of, say, 8 months? What would happen to the doctor's surgery if the building was demolished - would the practice return to the new facility or just take the opportunity of closing this well-used facility?

 

4. Weston Rhyn is the only village hall in the county with an elevator to its upstairs accommodation - at the time of installation it was a facility which, in the opinion of the present committee, could never have been afforded as the maintenance costs (covered by current health and safety legilsation) run to over £600 per annum - and this for only a handful of clients who use the facility every quarter. It would have been better to have changed the accommodation to purely ground floor only facilities and so negate the requirement to provide access to all floors. Caretaker: this village is only one of two in the county with live-in accommodation for the caretaker but for many years now the accommodation standard had declined as there was no money to undertake even the most basic repairs. In the last 4 years we have repaird the roof, sorted out the damp problems and replaced the old metal-framed windows with new energy efficient UPVc double glazing. This has now depleted reserves to a dangerously low level.

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Thank you, This is a really comprehensive description of the problems the hall has and I am sure it will open up the discussion a bit.  I wasn't aware of a lot of this so am sure many other people who read this will now realize the seriousness of this situation.

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Thank you Lee,  You are correct, the Youth Club never asked for the heating to be turned up - it is the more elderly clubs who are not as active.  When you get older your circulation is not as efficient as you younger fitter people.  Elderly persons who are seated for about 2 hours feel the cold more and despite wearing more clothing they still feel cold and like to have the heating up.  The Zumba class on a Thursday don't need the heat on at all, in fact they throw the doors wide open to dispell the heat their bodies have generated through exercise.

 

The room hire charges are equal to most other village halls, if not slightly higher.  The village hall is an old building with rapidly deteriorating conditions: local facilities to us are cheaper because they are modern, more efficient and offer lower rates to gain business.  I know of a local facility which is less than 50% of our costs but they too will find that business will fall off as clubs and societies close or chase even lower costing venues.  Offering lower rates of hire is not economic in the long term as eventually these buildings too will need decorating, need new boilers, replacement windows, etc. and they will struggle with not having the reserves to pay for them.

 

Another venue locally offers free room hire and regains the cost of heating / room hire by sale of alcohol and food - but this is a licensed premises and cannot be compared as equal footing with a village hall.

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Don't the majority of your users not require the use of a bar/food, e.g. Zumba, Dog Class, youth groups, etc and therefore must pay for room hire. 

 

Also with these groups surely they are trying to get people in that locality, so the Institute Hall is the only option and therefore they must pay the rate in which the hall charges.  For example the youth groups only option would be the Institute Hall.

 

"The Zumba class on a Thursday don't need the heat on at all, in fact they throw the doors wide open to dispell the heat their bodies have generated through exercise"  Hmmmm interesting.

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There's an idea...maybe the Hall committee could do teas and biscuits when the hall is open for e.g. computers?

 

I had a similar idea.....  once you have people there make the most of them.  Tea/Coffee etc.  I did also mention that Weston Rhyn would have qualify for Village SOS but it seemed to fall on deaf ears.  Maybe its a bit optimistic but I had the idea of a Community Cafe, internet, tea/coffee, locally sourced produce, make use of the jungle to the side of the building for outdoor seating. 

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I can't help, but I can share information.

 

The pavilion in Gobowen is a much more modern building than the institute, but it also has it's share of problems. Although much smaller, it's a very hard building to heat up even though we do have central heating. Because of its location on the playing field, the building suffers with anti-social behaviour. That means parts get damaged and then replaced on a semi-regular basis and at a cost to the rate payer. 

 

A typical example are the windows; two of them had to be totally bricked up following fire damage but the builders only used plaster board for the interior, so that causes heat loss. Vents prevent us from getting cavity wall insulation. The low roof prevents us getting solar panels fitted (items are regularly thrown up there), even though the building is bathed in sunlight. 

 

We charge roughly £10 per hour for use of the main hall and kitchen (more for use of the Changing Rooms with showers) although we have allowed discounts and even free use. The building is always targeted by kids, so they'll be knocking on the windows during meetings (and worse) discouraging regular bookings. We always encourage groups to use the building, especially during the day in term time. The council uses it monthly, but once the tables are set out there's not too much room for anything else, so a community consultation event would typically have to be held in the Scout Hall or at All Saints.

 

Having said that, we have recently had bookings for a couple of kid's parties, and the place really does hot up when the building is full. There's also plenty of parking. Your building would really benefit from large scale "events" to maximize available space.

 

The institute is a fine building and it would be a terrible blow if Weston Rhyn were to loose it. I think that main hall would make a great cinema...but I'm already getting Skyfall for my birthday (PS: that's not a medical condition).

 

Good look and keep on fighting.

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hmmm interesting..... got a sewing machine?

We've got enough to do with all the wool we have.  If anybody wants a knitted headband (great for windy days) let us know colours etc.  We want to raise money, for the Stute and to keep the group going.

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The Institute is ideally placed to serve as a community cafe (internet cafe).  It is central, but unlike St Martins, there is no other cafe facility nearby.  Lots of us meet up in Morton Garden Centre for a chat, would be good to be able to do it in the Stute with Internet access!  It would also attract visitors down from the Quinta.

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Must admit the idea of an internet cafe is really interesting! Could also turn it into a reading read with papers. You can do so much especially with the internet to hand, even get idea's and patterns on there should imagine for the Knit & natter group!

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Thank you for your valued comments.

 

As a charitable trust we are not permitted to make profits or trade.  There is an option of opening up an associated trading account by which we could run a community cafe.  I will bring your comments to the attention of my fellow committee members at our meeting on 21st March.   HOWEVER, we need volunteers to run a cafe and we would probably have to have a few changes to the kitchen.  The area in front of the kitchen would need clearing and the wooden floor scubbing - which is not impossible.

 

I will enquire of the Community Council of Shropshire the ins and outs of running a cafe and when I see Maggie at Knit and Knatter we could have a chat about this as well.

 

 

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As a charitable trust you are allowed to receive donations.  You could get round the trading rules by having a donations bucket, and serve teas etc with suggestion that people donate!  

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Im new to the village, well 5 years now. But the institute is a vital part of village life for those who don't drive. The elderly need places to meet and have functions. How many days/ evenings are the facilities being used at the moment?I know im planning on using it to run courses there, because of its central location.

 

Paul  

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Various good ideas abound.  Internet cafe, cup of coffee and a chat whilst using the computers, breakfast clubs, lunch clubs.  All very good and have been talked about.  What we are really short of is someone to run these clubs and act as general volunteers.  The Management Committee are willing to administer these ideas but none of us have the time to be in the institute for hours on end serving teas, etc.  WE NEED MORE HELP IF YOU WANT THESE FACILITIES - any volunteers out there?

 

We recently volunteered for a Jobseekers Club (funded by Big Local) and in 5 weeks not one person took up the opportunity of getting free help to access the Direct Gov website, learn how to create a c.v. or just even ask how to turn on a computer.  The planned 13 weeks have been cut short now because of lack of support - we had two members of the MC for 2 hours per session plus the paid expert from Shropshire council for 2 hours per week and distributed over 300 leaflets around the parish.

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This may sound a little sinful, but perhaps the institute should get a licence to sell/serve alcohol.

 

The main hall is big enough to hold a large party. I'm also convinced that local public consultation meetings would be alot better attended and stimulating if free drink was available to attendees. It needn't be beer. What about a glass of wine or a shot of whiskey...just enough to loosen the tongue and get a debate going. 

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