Hullavington New Village Hall Project Group and Village Hall Committee

Update from 12th  October 2005

This area provides news and information with regard the New Village Hall project and Village Hall Committee group and the following is the situation in September.

Terrapin have been selected to build the new Village Hall.

New Hall Project Group

On the 17th March 2004 a serious fire in the Village Hall resulted in its subsequent complete demolition. As a result a project group, with project co-ordinator Bob Fenner, was formed with the aim of rebuilding the hall. Over the past year members of this group in progressing towards this above aim have expounded a lot of effort. Full details of this can be found in the History section. The minutes of the last meeting may be found in the Minutes section.

The situation with regard the new hall at the present time is as follows:

Following the positive news with regard the lease, the finalisation of the design plan and the drawing up of a detailed design specification, requests for tender were sent out to four possible suppliers in July with a request date for return by 6 pm on Friday 2nd September. In the event three replies were received..

On Monday afternoon 5th September at 2pm seven members of the Village Hall Committee met to open and consider the tender replies. Three hours were spent in deliberation, considering each ones response to our specification.

At the end of this period the group was asked:

i)  Did members have enough information on which to make a decision and were they ready to make such a decision? All members affirmed.

ii) What was the preferred choice of members? There was a unanimous vote in favour of accepting the Terrapin quotation.

The basis of this decision centred on three main factors, namely.

a) Terrapin was the only contractor submitting a tender that was capable of supplying a building with an internal, open pitched ceiling to the roof line – a feature that was seen as essential.

b) Terrapin’s documentation and presentation of costs were clear, complete and unambiguous and one remained confident that there were unlikely to be major cost areas that had not been included in the tender quotation.

c) Only a building erected by Terrapin had been visited by some members of the project group (despite the fact that a request had been made to all those invited to tender) and the result of this was a confirmation that one could be confident of the final product in terms of appears, style and quality.

On the basis of the decision of the tender evaluation group a recommendation that the contract for replacing the village hall should be placed with Terrapin was proposed at the meeting of Hullavington Parish Council on Wednesday 14th September 2005. It was unanimously approved, as was the proposal that the Parish Council should now proceed with the necessary Planning application.

The proposal that a loan should be obtained to top up the difference between the new hall cost and current hall funds, including the insurance, was postponed for a month to allow Terrapin to come back with a cost for them to complete the car park and reconnect the water supply.

Planning Application

The request for planning should proceed within the next few weeks.

Project planning

As indicated in previous Newsletters, to support its work the hall project group has developed and is refining a comprehensive complex project plan that it hopes will allow the future work of the project to take place in a controlled and managed way.

The new village hall project group is much smaller than it was about a year ago, just after the old hall burnt down. At the moment there are only about 10 active members in the group and, frankly, there are not enough people to take on all the tasks and jobs that will increase as the project progresses.

Would YOU like to take on a specific task to support the project group, as we enter what we hope will be the final few months of the project in 2005/2006?

We are now making good progress towards the actual building of the hall, but it is essential that a number of other processes should run in parallel and be co-ordinated with the building. Such as: -

• The re-supply of electricity to the site at the appropriate time
• The re-supply of water
• The renewal of the Entertainment Licence
• The establishment of new hiring procedures and fees
• The Constitution of the Hall Committee
• The equipping of the hall with tables, chairs, consumables
• etc.

It would be a great pity to have a new hall ready and then not be able to use it because other things are not in place

You might work on your own, or perhaps with one or two others. If you are interested then please contact either Bob Fenner (Tel: 837320) or David Hunt (Tel: 837729).

Hullavington Village Hall Committee

Village Autumn Show

Once again we enjoyed a very successful Autumn Show on September 3rd and we give our sincere thanks to Jebbie and Duddley Hewitt for their work in organising it and all the many other helpers both on the day and on the Friday evening. Once again the weather was lovely and it was very pleasant experience having the show in Victor Rawling’s barn and our sincere thanks to Victor for again making it available.

Perhaps it has not been an easy year for the vegetable growers as the vegetable entries were a little down but nevertheless overall there were many excellent entries again this year. Congratulations to all the prizewinners and a big thank you to everyone who made the effort to enter and come along on the afternoon. Without entries there is no show!

200 Club saved at the 11th hour?

We are pleased to say that we are receiving a number of offers from people to collect and John Greenwood has offered to take on the co-ordinating role and so things are very positive that the 200 Club will continue. It would be a great shame if it ceased at the end of this financial year, because it provides a valuable source of income to the Village Hall. So please continue to support the 200 Club particularly through this transitional period and please be patient if things seem to be changing a little.

So a very sincere thank you to Peter Morris, who is stepping down as co-ordinator, and to Doug Butler who is retiring from collecting. Doug has been collecting for nineteen years. It was very fitting that they both made a last appearance at the 200 Club draw at the Autumn Show.

Here is a picture of Peter and Doug taken just after they had completed their last 200 Club draw at the Village Show.

(Click to enlarge)