Advice to parishioners

Increase in parish precept for 2022/23

 

As you will all be aware, during the last few months major renovations have been undertaken to make the village hall fit for future use.

Thanks to an anonymous donor the south wall has been completely rebuilt. All windows in the main section of the building are to be replaced. (The replacement of the south side windows has been delayed by Covid but will be undertaken soon.)

We have received a grant for the replacement of some outdated heaters and these will be replaced very soon, hopefully prior to publication of the newsletter.

Our donor has paid for the rebuilding of the south wall, and the windows and new bi-fold doors have been paid for by both the village hall committee and the parish council.

However during the demolition of the south wall the builders realised that the entire floor in the main body of the hall, and the recovery room at the rear, was completely rotten and had to be urgently replaced in order to allow them to rebuild the wall.

Additionally, once the bi-fold doors were installed, the building inspector advised that building regulations required the construction of a patio outside the bi-fold door area.

Both these items were not only unexpected, and of course urgent, but neither the village hall committee nor the parish council had sufficient funds to meet this expenditure.

After discussion it was suggested that we approach the Town Estate Charity to ask if they could loan the parish council the funds, to be repaid over a period of time.

The Town Estate Charity has kindly agreed to loan the parish council the funds to pay for the floor replacement and the patio, but of course these funds have to be repaid.  

We now wish to advise you that in order to repay the loan we will need to increase the parish precept for 2022/23. The precept will increase by 11% going forward which represents a total amount of £980 for the coming year. 

This will be the first increase in precept for 3 years and we hope you will agree that it represents a very worthwhile investment in the village hall.

The hall is the main asset of the village and is used daily by the school and is of course available at a very small charge to all villagers for your own personal events.

This will now be a pleasant experience for children and villagers alike, rather than one pervaded by the smell of damp and rot!

We wanted to advise you in advance of the increase in precept.

If you have any comments please do not hesitate to contact the parish clerk. Her contact details are in the newsletter.

We would like to record here our thanks both to our anonymous donor and to the Town Estate Charity. Without them we would not now have what is to all intents and purposes a “new” village hall.

We are extremely grateful.

 

Liz Cain

Parish Council Chair,  on behalf of Wetheringsett cum Brockford Parish Council