Good News about the Henley Community Hall: January 2009
Improvements to the Henley Hall writes Churchwarden Michael Longdon on 29 December 2008
Since taking over as Church warden many of you will know that I have been trying to raise funding for improvements to the Henley Hall. Along
with a small group of people we have explored different avenues of finance, with a lot of time given to researching both Trust and Grant making
organisations, examining their conditions and seeing if we indeed fitted their criteria.
The first thing that became obvious is that we had to include the word Community in our applications so for this purpose The Henley Hall has
now become "The Henley Community Hall", just by the inclusion of the word Community, this has made our applications more appealeable. After several
disappointments we had a meeting with the Diocesan Fund Raiser to seek his advice and assistance. Acting on this we sought financial assistance from
the Diocese, we were successful in this as we needed a pot of money for "Third Party Funding" if we were successful with our applications to the Waste
Disposal companies.
Our small group were much encouraged by this initial success as it gave us the 'financial cushion' which would need. The time had come to go for
the 'Biggy' a Business/Project plan had to be produced and a 36 page application form had to be submitted. We also had to obtain letters of support
from the organisations which use the Hall, and from some of those who have used the Hall and left due to the poor toilet facilities along with the
inadequate disabled access and the current state of repair of our electrical fittings.
We chose as our preferred Grant Maker a company called WREN (Waste Recycling Environmental Ltd) as we believed that we fitted all their
criteria. Due to the time scale we missed the summer dates for application, but we worked hard and submitted our application in time for the Autumn
round of applications. We received notice that our application would be processed and be assessed by the Advisory Panel on the 13th of November 2008
and if successful by the WREN Board on the 9th of December 2008, as most of you will by now know that I announced to the congregation on the 14th of
December 2008 'we had been successful in our bid'.
Our next step is to have a site meeting with our preferred contractor to decide our time plan for the improvements; this will be held on
Thursday the 8th of January 2009. It is envisaged that the Hall will have to be closed for two weeks to allow for the work to be undertaken
without interruption, so when we have agreed the time scale all the Hall Users will be advised and an update to our improvements will be in the next
issue of 'MARK MAG', and on our website.
As an outline, the improvement work to be undertaken is:
- Renew both the Ladies and Gentlemen’s toilets in line with current disabled legislation.
- To upgrade the access to the Hall with regard to current disabled access legislation.
- To upgrade the electrical system with regard to current electrical legislation.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have in any way helped or supported this endeavour over the last three years.
Yours in Christ,
Michael