2022-03-31-accounts - Oxhill Village Hall

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Chair’s report to Oxhill V.H. AGM

25th May 2022

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Once again it’s been an incredibly busy year mainly due to applications for grants to fund the
extension & renovation of the hall. This has been on going since the beginning of 2019 and
there have been many obstacles on the way.
We hope our major source of funds will be the National Lottery Community Fund & to this
end we had an original application for £150,000. On getting through to the final stages of
the application, we were advised that as the project was over £100K we needed to appoint a
professional Project Manager & Quantity Survey. After considerable research we appointed
Julie Crawshaw a well recommended & experienced P.M. She in turn recommended Greenways
as Q.S. & they used Ian Frankton as Electrical & Mechanical consultants.
The Q.S. Produced a report which more than doubled our budget of £182K to £460K & made
the whole project unviable. The P.M. advised that
i) our budget was now 3 years old.
ii) there was a 5%increase in building costs.
iii) 140,000 builders had left the trade since Brexit.
iv) steel had increased in cost by 50%.
We had a zoom meeting with the P.M. & Q.S. to value engineer the document and removed
many inessential items in the original specification & others which he had included which were
not required, thereby reducing the estimate back down to our original budget.
Then early this year I was advised by my contact at the National Lottery that we were unlikely
to get anything over £100K as no projects of that size were getting approval since the effects
of Brexit & the pandemic.
Having by then been obliged to spend over £7000 on so called experts we called a halt &
dispensed with their services. In the meantime Julie Crawshaw & I had applied for a
Green Shoots Grant from SDC worth £25K with a fully costed application to reduce our carbon
footprint with a Mechanical Heat & Ventilation System. This application was rejected without
explanation.
I then went back to basics & revamped our National Lottery application to £98K, below the
critical threshold requiring a Q.S. & professional P.M. and the committee agreed we should
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proceed with phased development using existing funds to complete each stage. I asked 3 local
builders to re quote on the revised specification for submission to the National Lottery. We
await the outcome of the Capital Team’s final deliberations on our application. IT SHOULD BE
TOMORROW I’ve jumped through numerous hoops, filled in endless forms & answered all
their questions (sometimes more than once) & the outcome is eagerly awaited.
Meanwhile, Richard Collings resumed his role as Project Manager and proceeded to begin
work.
We applied for & were granted an amendment to the planning approval to change the roof
design & external wall materials thereby reducing building costs considerably.
The bank of soil behind the hall was removed to make way for the extension. The 1m
foundations were excavated & the spoil removed. The existing drains were rodded, positions
recorded and building control approved the work.
Since then Richard, with John’s help, has installed the new drains for the extension, overseen
the footings & concreting of the over-site to damp course level.
We were offered some second hand bricks which match the existing old Banbury bricks &
these were bought & are in store ready for the new porch construction. All the work to date
has building control approval.
The next phase is to complete the work on the retaining wall to the rear of the hall & Richard
is installing a concrete panel King Post retaining wall. In this endeavour he has been grateful
for the assistance of Stuart Whittaker, John Bicknell & Derek Harbour.
All this work has been done well under budget by purchasing materials on line or locally & of
course Richard’s labour is free! We’ve saved thousands of pounds so far but we still need
funding.
This year I’ve made many grant applications for funding, these include:
The People’s Post Code Lottery & Morrisons supermarket - both refused
Successes include:-
Community Infrastructure Levy - Oxhill Parish Council have kindly donated twice this year to
fund the new heaters & money towards building materials for the footings.
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The National Lottery for All (separate from the Community Fund) granted us £10,000 in March Grants from SDC relating to Covid as detailed in the treasurer’s report were also received. SDC also have a much larger CIL fund & we currently have an application in progress with them. We have also looked into the possibility of raising money through the Council Tax. Each year the Parish Council sets it’s budget for the coming year & this budget or precept includes an amount which is incorporated in the council tax we all pay. Currently this is £75 per year per household & is one of the lowest in Warwickshire. If we fail to get sufficient funding elsewhere it might be possible to increase this precept to fund a loan from the Public Works Board or any willing lender, which could be a bank, an individual, or someone in the private or voluntary sector. This would of course involve a public meeting for village residents to approve or reject the proposal.

We continued as far as possible with our normal fund raising events during the year and have managed to include a Plant Sale & coffee morning last May (all the proceeds donated by the Garden Club to VH funds) a BBQ in June (in 2 sessions to comply with Covid restrictions), a Curry Night & Village Breakfasts in October & March & also A Quiz Night. The Progressive Supper was in September & we also repeated the Christmas Tree on the lawn, kindly funded by the Parish Council. The Village Christmas lunch went ahead & was much enjoyed. The Beer & Bubbles event & the Burn’s Night were casualties of the Covid epidemic but lets hope we can revive them again this year. We try to keep the old hall functioning but this is increasingly difficult. We do not have a cleaner so Ali, Sarah & I take it in turns to clean the hall. Our Air Filters are now here to improve air quality & reduce the spread of infection. These were provided free of charge by Warks County Council. The next 2 phased building projects are to replace the windows with glazed doors & renovate the kitchen area. Both of these are expensive and are currently out to quote with local builders.

My thanks as always to the committee for their support during the year & the “friends” of the hall for their help when needed. Earlier this year Derek Harbour resigned from the Trustees after 13 years of service and we thank him again for his dedication & hard work. Adrian Marklew is resigning this evening also after many years on the committee and we thank him for his contribution to the work of the Trustees.

That concludes my report for the year April 2021 to March 2022 and I’d like to propose the adoption of this report.

OXHILL VILLAGE HALL EXPEMDTfvRE C YEAR EIIDING31 03 XNCOME LErrINGS RINcn(xrfs PiANT &4LE ¥(1.7S 385. 3B5.DD 22z4.lb -561.9D 649x7 -2t.oo 66186 rftofjRE5S]VE SUPPFIi LESS C05rs BIG &964XFAsrocr 628.B7 -iio_c 1212.74 .343.94 511.00 -381.95 414.82 .190.00 401.51 276.39 CURRY NIGKr LUNC Iz93 Quiz BREXFAsf MARCY 311.51 (X>iAlaLLORS GPMT NL GPArit 1.4LY).OD DONAn)NS PARTSH CVLThaLGWIT 405.00 TOTAL JNCOIIE 619.27 566.96 INSUPM 556.85 8.973.62 54.23 iio. 4?. BUSINESS RATE REFl&EE COLLECtEON MOWING/GARDEfiIN srATIONERY MIscELLAJE0Us EKPENSES 485.00

J.12 183.S4 -147.JO 251.13 EXCESS OF IflCOME OVER EXPENSES 15A71K70 AF1 SIE AT 3tst MARI 2022 OPENING &4L*ICE 8EI1ELF1jNDs TPOltfFFD?Yt kltti n?PJf T. RESW_ 7,575.63 15 47d y6 wx¢.sy BUILDIIIG EVE BROUGirr FWD 24W2.rKI 15,tXO. LESS WOPX DONE 2S3kO.58 35361.17 TOTAL TIILLAGE IIALL FIIMDS BY SAC Atikox 329?Q l? STOC% & FLOAT 33361.17 AUDITORS CERT1cATION A T them to IN the bc$.ry rd.".tryrnèt S¥. 2 1 iy2022