Welborne Village Hall AGM notes.

The Annual General Meeting of the Trustees of Welborne Village Hall was held on Tuesday 6th April 2004

The Hall is licensed to be open for public use from 8.00 am until 11.00 pm 365 days in the year with the exception of December 31st/ January 1st when there is an extension until 1.00 am.
WELBORNE VILLAGE HALL
Welborne Village Hall is a Registered Charity (No. 1086084)

1. ANALYSIS OF USE:

There were 65 bookings across the year.
Meetings: 23 (Runhall PC 8; Welborne PCC 1; Trustees 12; Welborne Arts Festival 1, Village Meeting 1)
Polling Station European Elections
Family Parties 6
Funerals 2
CTC 6
First Choice Foster Care 4
Dance classes 8
Events 15 ( NY Social; Spring clean; London Guitar Trio; Jim Bacon - Weather Matters; Jasper Smith Jazz Trio; Pampered Chef; Open gardens; Welborne Arts Festival {3 days}; Hog Roast; Church Supper; Bishop¹s Service; Puppet Theatre; Helen Chadwick Singers)

2. WELBORNE VILLAGE PLAN REPORT.

This was printed and circulated to Runhall Parish Council, NRCC, SNC, The Countryside Agency, Richard Bacon MP for S Norfolk and everyone in the village in March 2004.
A Public meeting was held in October to consider the outcomes from the report. Three action plans are being implemented.
The registered Charity ³Friends of Welborne Church² is being set up to raise funds to maintain the fabric of the church.
The Parish Council has responded to issues raised on housing provision in the village and has implemented consultation with South Norfolk Planning Officers and aims to produce a Welborne Building Development Plan agreed by both SN Council and the village.
The Trustees of Welborne Village Hall have confirmed the support of the village for a building project which will upgrade the existing toilets, provide indoor storage space and improve access to the building. The appraisal identifies the need for improved service provision in the village and the Trustees will implement new services once the building project is completed.

A Supplement to the Welborne Village Plan Report has been prepared by the Trustees which sets out what was agreed at the October Public Meeting and the three Action Plans which stem from it. This will be printed and circulated to everyone who received the March Report very soon. We very much hope that once these plans have been implemented the village will be willing to look at other projects which may help to enhance our environment.
Bev Long, Clerk to Runhall Parish Council has managed the funding for the appraisal very efficiently and we very much appreciate the work she has done on our behalf.

3. BUILDING PROJECT:

The project costs, £40000, are high because of the need to build a structure which is high quality and matches the traditional material used in the rest of the building.
We have got significant funding, and the village has agreed to make contributions with work in kind, such as demolition, laying of new pathways and internal decoration but even with this there is a short fall of approximately £15000.
NRCC are supporting the project and are making an application to Biffa Waste Recycling Group for funding on our behalf. The process is slow and unfortunately we will not know the outcome until the summer. We are also waiting for the results of other applications made to 2 other charities.

4. FINANCES:
The Audited Accounts for 2004 will show a healthy income from the various activities and events held. For the first time our turnover in the last financial year was greater than £10000. We are fortunate in having an active, hard working, imaginative group of trustees who are responsible for most of the events which take place. Not everything we put on raises funds but most events do and three were outstanding.
The open gardens in May. Organised by Hilary Egerton Smith and Sue Frost.
The Welborne Arts Festival in June. Organised by Mike Webb.
The Summer Draw and Hog Roast in July. Organised by Trevor Curson and Jon Harvey.
We are also very fortunate in having people in Welborne who give up their time providing refreshments for our bigger events. Special thanks to:
Ruby and family from Walnut Tree Farm for their outstanding afternoon teas for the Open Gardens.
Eve and Dave Charles who provided the refreshments for the very successful New Year Social in January and the Arts Weekend in June.

5. PROGRAMME OF EVENTS;
Creative Arts East have again supported us with their touring programme.The Guitar Trio, (held in the Church), the Puppet Theatre and the Helen Chadwick Group were of outstanding quality and were greatly appreciated by those who attended but the costs of such events is very high and our small venue means that we have difficulty breaking even on these occasions. However the village hall is here to provide a service to the community and there are times when making money is less important than the event itself.
Creative Arts East perform an important coordinating role for arts events in Norfolk and we benefited by having free Norfolk wide publicity for the Arts Festival.
Support for a particular event is always difficult to predict but events which are Welborne specific like the Hog Roast, the New Year Social, and Harvest Supper are well supported and successful.
A new development is that others outside the church and village hall committees are making regular bookings, (e.g. the Dance class) and occasional events like the Pampered Chef. This is excellent and in our 2005 programme volunteers have come forward to offer Quiz nights and Table Top games Afternoons. We hope this trend continues and grows.
We are working closely with the church and have started to produce a joint programme across the year. Many of the fundraising events support both the Church and village hall.

6. CONCLUSION:
We hope that by the time the Annual Report for 2006 is written the building project will have been completed, the programme of events for 2005 will have been as successful as the 2004 programme and the extended services of Lunch Club, Day Centre with mobile services such as Library, chiropody, hairdressing and other alternative therapies either will be in place or planning for them well advanced. We live in exciting and uncertain times which is stimulating, but I think we would all welcome a period of quiet consolidation before the next generation of Trustees takes over.

Annual General Meeting of Trustees of Welborne Village Hall
Tuesday 6th April 2004:
Chairman's Report:

The analysis of the use of the Hall in the last 12 months indicates that the local community makes good use of the building, an income of approximately £1000 is generated from hire charges and most of the events put on are well supported and generate an income which allows us to manage the day to day running costs of the Hall comfortably.

However there are matters of concern

1.

The weight of responsibility carried by the Trustees in creating and running the main programme of events is considerable and it is difficult to tap the potential of others in the village for help. The village development plan report indicates that there is support for what we do, we have to find ways of getting more people involved.
2.

Although the average use of the Hall at 4 hours per week is an improvement it is only 5% of the time available and there are opportunities for increasing and developing the services provided here. Whether or not this requires us finding a solution to 1. above depends on what is offered. Some new services like a day centre or lunch club for the elderly could only work with a paid leader and the participation of Social Services which would bring new people in.
3.

We cannot afford to present major events which end up making a loss. The puppet show from CAE only broke even and the London Guitar Trio made a loss of about £100. The main problem here is that CAE set ticket prices too low. The Car Boot Sale was not a success and some of the Pub Nights teeter on the edge of financial failure. However it is important that we continue to experiment and I am particularly keen to see the Church used regularly for music and drama. The financial viability of doing this depends upon getting a regular clientele and a reputation for providing good quality professional events.

There are popular music and theatre events which might have greater appeal than 3 highly skilled guitar players and if CAE cannot meet our needs perhaps we can look at other sources for a programme of presentations in the Church 2 or 3 times a year.

The Report on the Welborne Village Development Plan has been completed and distributed this week. The Trustees began the process but the hard work of carrying through the project was done by the steering group Brenda Baxter, Jenny Chapman, Heather Gordon, Claire Lussignea, Richard Stephenson, Angela Wadham. We are very grateful their efforts. One of the first jobs the new village hall committee will need to do is to look carefully at the report and suggest what we feel the next steps might be.

The plans to build an extension with storage space and new toilets for the disabled will cost about £25000. Applications for funding are being prepared for NRCC, SNC, WREN, Awards for All/ Community Fund, and the Hedley Foundation. These applications have to be completed before May 3rd 2004. Thanks in particular to Trevor Curson for his initiative in contacting the Basham Trust which raised £250 for the project. I hope that this time next year it will be possible for the Chairman to present a report knowing that all our financial worries have been solved and that we can look ahead to doing other things like reinstating the clock, building a car park which will leave our "village green" as a village amenity rather than as now a rag tag car park whenever an event is held here and so on.

Finally my thanks to all the Trustees for the support they have given me and the hard work they have put in on behalf of the local community in keeping Welborne Village Hall structurally sound and an important focus of community activity in the village.

FIXED ASSETS
Office equipment cost as at 1st January 2003

£169.97
Less: Depreciation as at 1st January 2003

£ 25.97
Charge for the year

£ 21.00

£ 46.97

£123.00
CURRENT ASSETS
Prepayment and Debtors

£581.22
Bank Current Account

£463.07
Bank Deposit Account

£3277.23

£4321.52

£4444.52

FUNDS
General Purpose fund
As 1st January 2003

£3254.19
Excess of Income over expenditure

£503.03

£3757.22

Number of people who make use of the Hall. Very difficult to estimate. The Welborne Arts Festival had a throughput of over 300 people over the weekend, the BBQ and Summer Draw attracted over 60 people. Making a crude estimate of the number of people attending the different events the number of people served by the activities held in the Hall last year > 600

Top of the page

Return to Village Hall Page

If there are no links showing on the left to other pages on the site click here