Memorial Hall News – December 2021/January 2022

I am pleased to report our extension is now complete. The decorating has been carried out and the floor has now been laid, which was not part of the builder’s contract. We have also received our grant from the Ibstock Enovert Trust (£15K), and we are waiting for the Grant from KCC (£10K), which is being processed as I write this. Meaning we will have received £30K in total in grant monies. We have also been fortunate to receive a further Discretionary Restart Grant- top-up (almost £3K) from TMBC this was from funds left in the TMBC pot allocated by the government.

I am also pleased to report hall bookings are good at the moment and on the rise with children’s parties leading the way, with an additional three regular bookings in the last few weeks.

I can confirm we will be holding our Bi-annual New Year’s Eve party this year with the usual format of bring your own party food and drink and we will supply the entertainment in the form of Graham, our disco man. Tickets remain at £15 each available from me at david_vallance@btinternet.com or 01732 883422. Table set up from 4.30 pm.

The acquisition of the strip of land adjacent to OTG is going ahead, all be it slowly with the solicitors, meaning once this is confirmed, we can get Baxalls to erect the boundary fence along that section of our garden. Baxalls still have one or two other remedial items to carry out in our garden affected by the school building work. With the extra area of land plus the alteration to our garden through the building work it means we have areas that need planting up, and with The Queens Green Canopy-Plant a tree for the Jubilee initiative we have allocated some money to do just that to these areas, also if you would like to donate a tree to this scheme please speak to us. We have quite a lot of gardening work to do over the next few months, so please join us if you can on our Saturday morning shift from 9.30 for just an hour or two; the December date will be the 18th. If you require more info or wish to help at other times please get in touch with me or email Jane Jewitt @ janejewitt89@gmail.com.

Lastly, we could do with some younger blood to join our band of trustees with the view to taking over the reins sometime in the near future, we are trying to pay our way to the day to day running of the hall, but it will still need a management team of volunteers to oversee it. Currently, we have only ten trustees, over half of which are well into the 70+ bracket and have been running our hall for 20 or more years. Our Village hall is very successful we need to keep it that way PLEASE HELP US!

David Vallance, Chairman of Trustees