20[th] May 2025 - AGM
Culmington Village Hall
Chairman Annual Report
Since our AGM held on Tuesday 14[th] May 2024, this has been another busy year for the Committee. I would like to thank each and one of you as Trustees over the last year for all your continued support as I know everyone as Trustees are volunteers to our management of our hall. Secondly, I would like to thank Jeff Williams as Vice Chairman, Avril Enston; Treasurer and Olivia Ireland as Secretary for their continued support to myself and the rest of the Trustees. Olivia kindly stepped in during October to support our committee, and I know we all appreciated this.
Also, we welcomed Emma Wathes and Shirley Alderson to our team last year, and thank you for your support at all our local events and helping out and bringing your friends along to our events.
In my last report last year, our aims were to attract more hirers, promote our marketing development and to push forward for grants for the extension of the village hall. We have definitely achieved some of these areas.
We have continued to have regular Trustees Meetings; our aim is to have shorter meetings and to ensure that everyone is able to have a voice as part of our committee. Over the last year, we have all continued to work hard as a strong team to promote our community facility in Culmington Parish.
Our hire and bookings have increased, I would like to thank Avril Lines for being extremely efficient with all the bookings and providing the updated calendar of events for Ripples, Corvedale News and the additional pack that has been put up in the village hall this year has been most useful to have.
A marketing Subgroup has been working well, and we now have our own website and a special thanks to Allan Rowlands for setting this up and for overseeing the updating of this and the updates, this again helps us to promote the village hall. We have been complimented on our colourful posters advertising our events kindly supported by John Hart and his wife Yvonne again, thank you to both. We look forward to having new village hall signs in the near future.
We continue to welcome a lot of new people to the hall over the last year from the parish and outside by running different events to attract different age groups. This has been our main focus, and our social media and face book pages have increased people to attend events and have provided lovely comments on our face book page. To date we have had 327 people like our Page, and we have 555 followers this is great progress for us.
We are in discussions and reviewing our Governing Document, which was last updated in 1953, still remains in draft, once our land registry details are sorted, we will submit our revised version to The Charity Commission website.
All Health and Safety checks/Insurance is up to date and thanks to Avril Enston and Peter Lines in overseeing this. We have had issues with our plumbing over the last year, and Peter has been monitoring this and been liaising with the plumber to overcome and rectify the issues. It is great to have people locally for their support who can pop in and be near when needed and again thank you too all.
Over the last year, our food evenings continue to be a huge success, we have enjoyed curry evenings, and we held two new events our Big Breakfast and Steak night were well attended and positive feedback from everyone who attended. We are very lucky to have Gwyn Edwards and Anne Rowlands our village cooks and the rest of the team as helpers. We hosted for the 2[nd] year the Team Valley Vintage Club Annual Dinner and also held a wedding reception at the village hall with catering again done by Gwyn, Anne and the team. There is a huge amount of work that goes into the preparation of these events, and it does not go unnoticed by us all so again thank you all.
We have promoted our networking with our village halls, to avoid clashing of dates and in particular have worked closely with Westhope, Diddlebury and Stanton Lacy. All these village halls have their separate face book pages which we can share events on and keep in close contact. Our gardens and outdoor space are an enormous bonus to our village hall, and we continue to be complimented on our outdoor space.
Luncheon Clubs continue to be a huge success and thank you to Gwyn and Anne again for the organisation of these and everyone else that supports. The 100 club also has proved to be a success with two draws completed to date and another great idea.
We continue to raise funds or our extension and have been well supported at all our community events.
Our Licenced Bar continues to run well, with a small core of volunteers helping to run this at events which continues to be overseen by Allan Rowlands.
We have held all our routine normal events, over the last year, including the Flower Show, Christmas Fayre, regular luncheon clubs, coffee mornings and our own Hundred Club Lottery has been a success over the last year.
We continue to have music events/evenings which have attracted different people and age groups, and it has been great to see so many people making use of our hall. The Beefy boys continue to be a great success and the animal man this was held just recently on Sunday 18[th] May 2025 and for second year running we were exceptionally lucky with the weather and again drawing do many people to our hall. Great to see and our lovely outdoor space being used by so many children and families.
We held our 3[rd] Tractor Run in October 2024; this was another great success pulling the local community together and raising funds for the village hall extension and MS Society. We have great support from the community and outsiders and thank you to Pat Caine for organising this and our 4th event will take place on Sunday 5[th] October 2025.
We have held two celebration, anniversary events using our beacon over the last year which has been renovated and thank you to Peter Lines for overseeing this. This was our Community D Day remembrance on 6[th] June 2024 and our community VE anniversary 80[th] Celebrations on Thursday 8[th] May 20205 both well attended by our local community and readings provided by Peter Lines and our beacon lighters Jeff Williams and some local people.
With the Wi-Fi facility at the hall now available, this has been a great asset and the use of our card reader over the last year has really benefitted the bar for larger functions and continues to work well.
I believe our aim for the next year is to continue to promote our hall hire, to continue to promote our marketing and development and most importantly our extension of the village hall. Peter Lines has been a great support in supported the committee with the planning permission and extending this for the second time. This is a huge project to achieve and is high on the agenda to aim to complete as this will benefit the hall and storage space.
I did mention in my report last year, that we were hoping to plan our own Parish ball, we do have a group of local people keen to support with this and this we are aiming to complete and set a date very soon for 2026 as a fundraiser for our extension.
Thank you all for you continued support to the Village Hall. I appreciate all your hard work and commitment and to you all as Trustees. In addition, I would like to note that a lot of us here this evening have our beloved partners who also support and help at our events for setting up, catering and bar work, you all know who these people are, so again please extend my thanks on behalf of the committee for this.
Great teamwork and great community – thank you !
Joanne Mear – Chairman
May 2025
OpeTrin8 8are £186.88 Incoine Gabriell• la Folev HI of Table5 Cheque cashed Cheqtse cashed Total 105.Th) 75.(Kl Outgoings Gabriella la Foley Gardening expenses (ste rrent acc¢rrt expendilwe) Tenbury Band Quiz expenses Total out 649.88 150.rx) 75. 30.00 c/f 186.88 in 649.88 out 664.88 New balance I718 Treasurer... Chairman... £- .....Date.....Ztsb.Iw.e Auditor... . ..Date..
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Independent auditors report to the Trustees of Culmington Village Hall I have audited the financlal accounts of Culmington Vlllage Hall for the year ended 31 March 2025. In mv opinion. the financial accounts have been properly prepad and give an accurate representation of the state of the charity's affairs as of 31 Marth 2025. Signed: _...... McNallv Date". )3 s, &o&s