Another year has gone by, seemingly even more quickly than the last and it is time to reflect upon our work here operating Weston Lullingfields Village Hall.

Spread all over the country are thousands of halls like ours, approximately ten thousand at the last count. About 25 % date from before The Great War and a further six hundred commemorate the war itself. Many, like ours, were built by a community determined that people could get together in a space where they could take part in education, entertainment or life events such as birthdays, wedding receptions, Christening parties and funeral teas. It is estimated that, even with so many other venues offering more luxurious (and expensive) facilities in which to celebrate, over ninety thousand such life events are still held in village halls each year. With each hall being different and whether there is a sparkling new kitchen, exciting decorative schemes or a slight smell of damp, they remain a fundamentally important and yet often overlooked part of the framework of rural life.

The operation of almost all of these hall is largely the same. They, like us, are independent charities managed and operated by a group of volunteers, approximately eighty thousand at the last count, who give up their time and energy to deliver the continuation of the determination and foresight of those who gathered to raise the funds and build a hall from scratch or convert a redundant building. None of this is easy and all halls face the same problems, the most significant being the constant need to raise funds.

We have been fortunate this year to have been able to add to our reserves by increasing the income from rentals alongside some very successful fund raising from the events we run ourselves, generously complemented by the income from the bar. Income from the solar panels remains very strong, not least because of the excellent contract set up when the panels were fitted. Our Hundred Club is also a clear provider of income. We are always grateful to everyone who joins, congratulating the winners and commiserating with the losers.

The school remains our single biggest customer and they use the hall when they need to throughout the year. Their most frequent use is of the car park for staff parking as well as pupil drop off and collection. This use of the car park means the avoidance of what would be traffic chaos on the very narrow school frontage, with the school, like the entire road network in the area, being built with the expectation of horse drawn transport and pedestrians. 

Regular rentals provide opportunities for people to take part in a variety of activities, delivering benefits for both the physical and mental health of users. The life event rentals have increased this year, but are below what they would have been years ago, when the village demographic was different.

Our own events have been well supported, with a quiz usually generating good ticket sales and waiting lists were created when demand outstripped supply in the case of the line dancing and the quiz. Surprisingly, we did have to cancel one band evening as so few ticket  were sold, so we can never rest on our laurels when it comes to deciding what to do. The bingo evenings provide a link back to the very beginnings of the hall, and Pam and Alan deliver a lovely evening. Pop Up Pubs have been shown to require some food provision to generate a crowd and we have been grateful to those operators who have supported us. We would like to thank Geoff and his helpers for his wonderful pizzas and support over the years. We are looking for a replacement caterer who is willing to come along and who people will patronise. Unless we can provide a travelling caterer with enough customers, it is not worth them coming out.

Advertising is now world wide, with the internet in all its forms allowing us to let the global audience know what is being offered. We regularly sell tickets to people from a far wider area than the parish, with Weston folk sometimes a minority at events.  I would also like to make a plea for people to attend events at other village halls also, as there is a great deal of enjoyment to be had at live entertainments delivered at a fraction of the cost charged by more commercial enterprises. 

Expenditure has increased in the same way it has for everyone else. Fortunately we are exempt from Council Tax but still need to pay for our rubbish to be taken away. Other bills include insurance, licenses for music and the bar, broadband, window cleaning and also hall cleaning. With the increase in use, cleaning costs have increased significantly. Electricity prices affect us enormously as it is our only source of power, and heating the hall remains a necessary expense for much of the year.

With our reserves looking healthy we need now to be looking at larger repairs/refurbishments which are necessary and likely to be expensive. We have been fortunate that the hall wooden floor has not risen up over this year and so we can perhaps put off in the short term the huge expense of replacing the whole thing and also sorting out any issues to do with the slab and/or drainage. There was not the flooding of the car park seen in the previous year but it is something which requires constant vigilance. The kitchen floor will, however, require action in the very near future and this will be a larger job than it sounds as both the kitchen and bar will need to be removed first and then some or all of the floor boards replaced and the floor covering renewed. As with other expenditure, it is about securing best value and ensuring that repairs or replacements are for the long term.

In the longer term there are so many potential projects, but the main floor (and whatever is going on under it) and the windows will need to be replaced sooner or later. These considerable projects may well benefit from grants, although these are not at all certain, and so we will continue to raise funds by providing a hall that people wish to hire and by putting on events that people are willing to attend.

I would like to thank all the volunteers on the committee and also those who help out in different ways.  Without you the hall would not be what it is. I would also like to thank all of you spread far and wide who have supported the hall over the last year by attending our variety of offerings or taking part in our hundred club.

If anyone has read this and wants to see for themselves just what the hall can offer, we are running a band and BBQ evening on 13th June.