Supporting village halls and other community projects
Braithwaite Institute
19th October 2022
As we approach our Annual General Meeting on 19th October, it’s a time to reflect on the achievements and challenges of the year April 2021 to March 2022.
ACT dealt with 489 queries in this period, ranging from one off contact, to issues which required more in-depth support and communication.
Understandably, we continued to receive and respond to many Covid-19 queries, as village halls re-opened, and some activities could resume. Interpreting the Government guidance and supporting community buildings and groups to understand how it applied to them and how to resume activity in a Covid secure way, was a key part of our work in the early months of that year.
ACT continued to provide up to date national village hall information from ACRE on our Coronavirus web page and social media; send regular Community Buildings Updates (19 in 2021-2022); ACT newsletters (3 in 2021-2022); hold online Community Buildings events (5 in 2021-2022 with over 40 people attending at each); and support the Cumbria Village Halls Network Facebook group to grow to 245 members representing over 125 Cumbrian halls.
In addition, the usual fare of wide ranging non-Covid related queries also increased, as the year progressed and people started to feel more confident about returning to ‘normal’. As ACT Development Officer and Lead Village Hall Advisor, I assisted hall committees with a range of issues including: understanding and improving their governance, policies and procedures; charity requirements; trustee roles and responsibilities; finance and fundraising; building improvements; energy efficiency; renewable energy; accessibility; fire safety; safeguarding; food safety etc.
Three hall committees in particular worked hard to achieve national Hallmark Quality Awards. Arnside Educational Institute, Dalston Victory Hall and Scaleby Village Hall all achieved Hallmark One for charity essentials and administration; and for the second time, Thursby Parish Hall achieved both Hallmark One and Hallmark Two, for safety, licensing and maintenance.
ACT administers the national Hallmark award scheme for halls in Cumbria and during Covid restrictions adapted the ‘visit’ process to take place online. We’d like to thank our Hallmark volunteer visitors Peg Eastwood and Helen Squires for their continued commitment and support.
Despite the ongoing challenges of Covid-19, many hall committees continued to develop plans for how to improve their community buildings, making them more accessible, comfortable, energy efficient and sustainable, to better serve their communities both today and in the future. Taking appropriate professional advice can make all the difference when planning a building refurbishment and from July 2021 we were pleased to recommend A Muir Surveying as an ACT Preferred Provider for village hall building condition surveys and energy audits, following positive feedback from both hall committees and grant funders.
2021-22 saw the completion of a three-year National Lottery funded project, to support ‘community assets’ applying for National Lottery Reaching Communities grant funding. ACT helped applicants in all elements of their funding application, including the requirement for each to have a plan to improve accessibility and carbon reduction – important for any community facility.
We’d start with an initial discussion to assess what stage a project was at and explain the application process. Early contact provided more opportunity to support project planning, share the benefit of other hall’s experience, and to identify and address any governance or land ownership issues prior to an application being submitted.
Twenty-one projects successfully received over £800k of grants (£829,259 in 2019-2022; £379,771 in 2021-2022). All but two of these projects were village halls (ten projects supported in 2021-2022). Over the three-year project Lottery grants were awarded to: Ambleside Parish Centre; Allithwaite & Cartmel Parish Council; Beaumont Village Hall; Blindcrake Village Hall; Bolton Memorial Hall; Borrowdale Institute; Bouth Village Hall; Braithwaite Institute; Dalston Victory Hall; High Wray Village Hall; Howgill Village Hall; Hunsonby Community Centre; Keekle Village Hall; Kentmere Institute; Lazonby Village Hall; Orton Market Hall; Patterdale Playing Field Foundation; Seaton Village Hall; Skelton (Toppin) Memorial Hall; Threlkeld Village Hall; Warcop Village Hall
We’re delighted that ACT’s relationship with the National Lottery continues; further support for community assets is available and improvements for future grant funding and support are being developed.
ACT’s long-standing relationship with Eden District Council also continued with our contract for 2021-22 enabling additional support to village halls, Community Led Planning groups and other community groups in Eden district. As the lead for this contract I also attended the Eden Community Partnership panel, to review and make recommendations for Eden Community Fund grant awards, and coordinated joint meetings of the district’s five community-run swimming pools.
Adaptations for Covid-19 was again a key topic for discussion at these meetings, as the volunteers from each of the pools planned how to re-open and operate safely for their 2021 summer season. These ACT facilitated meetings were a good example of how groups adapted to meeting online using Zoom, with all but one of their meetings that year being held in this way.
What began out of necessity, due to the pandemic, has led to a greater flexibility for how ACT supports community groups in future. In a large rural county like Cumbria, online video meetings can significantly reduce travel time, cost and carbon emissions. It’s meant we were not only able to continue to run our much-needed Community Buildings events, but to deliver twice as many as pre-pandemic (also saving over 200 car journeys).
As ACT has learned how to navigate this new way of meeting and hosting events, we’ve found others have also become more comfortable and confident meeting online, and hope our relaxed and supportive events have had a part in helping with this. We recognise that there is still a need for in-person meetings and events, which can’t be fully replaced by meeting online, but that this can now be a choice to suit the circumstances, enabling ACT to provide more support for more communities in future years.