No meetings this month but lots of progress behind the scenes. And the stop press news – we have just been given a National Lottery grant to finance the feasibility study, so it is full steam ahead.

Experience from other villages
Guy Duxbury organised a trip to Gamblesby, where the village hall has been very successfully renovated. A group of five people went, saw what they had done and talked to the secretary of the village hall committee there.

We were impressed by the emphasis on energy conservation – heavy wall insulation, a geothermal heating scheme (ie taking warmth from about six feet underground via a pipe system) and an on-site wind turbine. These are ideas we are seriously exploring for our own scheme.

We also learned how difficult it can be to get the level of funding we need – Gamblesby were turned down for lottery funding the first time, but pressed ahead with a more limited scheme, then made a successful bid to allow their full scheme to be implemented.

Fuller details and some photographs are available from Jon Trotman

Information from village organisations about their existing and future requirements. Thanks to all villageorganisations and others who responded to the questionnaire. If anyone has missed out and wants to feed in information about what they need in a revitalised village hall, get in touch asap with Steven Oldfield or Ron Horne.

Community fund raising
We have set a target of £15000 to be raised from the local community over the next two years, over and above the normal Public Room fundraising activities and without impinging on the established fundraising of other village organisations.

The Parish Council has now established a completely separate account into which money raised will be put. So any cheques etc should be made payable to Threlkeld Village Hall Revitalisation Fund. A separate advert gives some details of particular fundraising activities. We need a lot of help with fund raising, so if anyone has any good ideas or just wants to get involved in any way, get in touch with Dot Benson or Sandra Hewitson.

School input
We would like to thank the schoolchildren who submitted ideas and drawings about the future of the Public Room. They included some excellent suggestions which will be discussed with the architects. We hope to display the drawings in the Public Room later in the year; some of them are already on the Threlkeld website – see http://www.threlkeldweb.co.uk/home..

Grant for the feasibility study
We put in a very thorough bid for funding towards a full scale feasibility study – to include plans of alternative approaches, research into the need for a village hall, publicity consultation etc. The National Lottery “Awards for All” scheme has just written to grant us £5250 for this work, which is very good news indeed, and means we can now go ahead and commission architects to do this vital initial work.

Architects and the brief for the scheme
We have already made preliminary approaches to some architects. Now that we have the grant money in place, we can make the approaches firm and hope to get on with detailed work with a selected architect very soon. The brief for the scheme is now finalised subject to discussion with the architects; we have built in all the positive suggestions and comments people have made.

If anyone is interested in being involved in the discussions with architects, contact Jon Trotman.

Constitution of the Public Room
A lot of hard work has been taking place in the background on setting up a revised “trust deed” for the Public Room. This is the legal basis on which the hall is owned and managed on behalf of the community. The existing deed dates back to 1899, and does not relate to the current law relating to charitable bodies. This will all need to be be straightened out by October in time for a full funding application to be submitted.

Threlkeld Pilot Study financed by the Lake District National Park
We are at an advanced stage in agreeing the terms of reference for a major survey of Threlkeld, looking at all the facilities, services etc we have here and how they can best be protected and enhanced. This will be handled by specialist consultants engaged by the Parish Council, but with the money coming from the Government via special funds allocated to the National Park Authority. It is hoped this study will provide a lot of the hard-edged justification we need for a revitalised village hall.

Meeting
Another meeting of the full group Action Group is scheduled for 4 July 2007. We will be able to report a lot of progress then.

Thanks
Again many thanks to the number of people who have pitched in to support this project which is now really beginning to move. But everyone can now contribute by supporting the various fundraising activities.

Trevor Roberts
Email for more information or to contact any of the above