1) Committee and Sub-groups – your volunteer teams have yet again shown fantastic commitment through their time given to fund raising and ensuring good detail design and quality in the build.
2) Day-to-day running of Hall
- Cinema – continued success using the Church, with thanks to them for allowing this to continue.
- Insurances for new Hall now in place so Hall and Committee members are suitably protected
- Bookings’ Secretary is again taking bookings and reports that there has been a good level of interest for when the Hall is finished.
- Stepping Stones will finish their term at Bradbourne, to give them time to move all their equipment back in the summer holiday for a September start in Parwich.
- Booking rates have increased as reported last year – local rates have increased by £1 or £2, non-local have increased by £5 & a new commercial rate has been introduced.
3) Building the Future
a) Steering Group
- The main news this year is that the new Hall is finished! The community now has a beautiful and unique hall designed by architects Marsh Grochowski. As previously communicated, the Committee had to reluctantly make the difficult decision to choose a cost led ‘Design and Build’ option with a new architect as the costs from the original architects came in much too high.
- This decision has resulted in the very successful build of a village hall, meeting the needs of the village and at a cost that the community could afford. The Committee and all the volunteers have all worked hard to address issues as they have arisen to keep the build process on track. The weather earlier in the year obviously threw the timescale out for quite a few weeks but due to very good communication between Wildgoose the contractors, Prosurv the consultants and your Committee, issues have been solved quickly at many points along the way.
b) Design Interface Team
- The original specification for the Hall has been adhered to, as these were the plans for which the Peak Park gave permission. The Design Interface Team have ensured that specifications were met and that where necessary, suggestions regarding internal finishes were made to the Committee for their approval via design boards and samples.
c) Funding
- The total build cost is approximately £700,000. Representatives from Wildgoose, Prosurv and the Committee have haggled long and hard at every cost meeting to ensure the costs were kept at or under the agreed target total and value for money was being obtained.
- Funding secured is currently at £703,000 (£5,000 in bank not in these figures for contingency purposes and still have Charity loan of £20,000 for cash flow). Thank you to all contributors so far. A full list will be circulated at a later date. The extra £3,000 along with the Awards for All £10,000 which was a bid won specifically for the staging and some of the chairs, has enabled us to look at funding extra items such as moveable screens & storage trolley for Stepping Stones and stage curtains & skirting.
Resource Table
| Funding source | Amount (£) |
| Big Lottery Fund | 476,650 (+£23,350) |
| Millennium Village Hall Fund (community-wide fund raising) | 15,000 |
| Parwich Parish Council | 3,000 |
| Project Parwich (1 year focused fund raising by community) | 11,806 |
| Members Community Leadership Scheme (Derbyshire CC) | 1,000 |
| Derbyshire Dales Housing | 1,500 |
| Business sponsorship (various) | 6,700 |
| Private donation. J Harrison – Harrison Ford | 1,000 |
| Derbyshire Local Authority (Children’s Services)/Parwich School | 25,000 |
| Trusthouse Charitable Foundation | 26,000 |
| Rank Foundation | 2,000 |
| Sustainable Development Fund (Peak District National Park) | 41,653 |
| Derbyshire Dales District Council Village Halls Grant | 2,000 |
| Garfield Weston | 10,000 |
| Derbyshire Community Foundation | 1,000 |
| Aggregates Levy Sustainable Fund | 10,000 |
| Derbyshire Dales Village Car Park | 5,000 |
| Leader Fund (for kitchen) | 9,136 |
| Low Carbon Buildings | 16,755 |
| W G Edwards Charitable Foundation | 2,000 |
| Benefit In kind approx | 35,854 |
| Awards for All (for staging & chairs) | 10,000 |
| Total cash & in kind materials granted | 713,054 |
d) Communications & Publicity
- There have been 18 full committee meetings since the last AGM with full minutes shared via the folder in the village shop.
- There have been 4 posters over the year displayed in Parwich, Pikehall, Alsop and Ballidon heralding progress and next steps, or advertising an open meeting.
- There have been 3 newsletters, 1 in the form of ‘frequently asked questions’, 2 of which were posted through every residents door in Parwich, Pikehall, Alsop and Ballidon and all displayed on the web log and all notice boards.
- There has been 1 open meeting to share the progress and plans of the build process (to which 8 non committee members came).
- The web log has been an outstanding success and the team has worked hard to provide a weekly photo diary on the web log of the build progress from which many of our funders have taken their updates along with news and updates.
- Over 50 local residents, representatives of users groups and representatives from grant giving bodies have been shown around the Hall during the build process.
e) Professional teams
- These include our Employer’s Agent and Quantity Surveyor, Prosurv, the Building Contractor, Wildgoose, and the new Architect, Glancy Nicholls, as well as structural engineers, mechanical & electrical engineers, our lawyer, village halls advisor, health & safety advisor, the Peak Park planners, Highways Agency & utility suppliers. The brunt of this work has been co-ordinated, progressed & resolved on our behalf by Chris Price of Prosurv – so a massive thank you to Chris.
4) Summary
- Your Committee continues to manage the final stage of the build and plan for the return to the day to day running of the Hall
- Please continue to read the minutes that will be displayed on the notice board inside the Hall and will continue to be in the folder in the shop and give the Committee your support in any way you can
- Thank you to all Committee, sub group and the many other volunteers for your valued input and to you the community for your continued interest and support
- Opening event in September/October is being planned by a sub group led by Val Kirkham with ideas taken from the community after request for ideas on the web blog and notice boards.
I was astonished by the coverage not given to the Hall’s AGM. It consisted of Patti’s eulogy on the magnificence of the building – with which many people disagree – followed up with the usual endorsements of enthusiasts. And that was all, until a few days later this Chairman’s report was published.
As many of you know, I suspect the Emperor has no clothes, but that’s not what I’m on about this time. Just for the record, however, the planners said ‘ …there are serious flaws with the design approach taken in this case that gives rise to the Authority’s objections on design grounds… any approval for the new hall would result in the introduction of a discordant and alien feature to the centre of the village.” Exactly so. Again “The building remains disproportionate in size and scale in the context of the application site and its immediate setting.” Precisely. We can see that now. But its too late……
Personally, I see the Chairman of the Peak Park Authority and his planning committee chairman, not the planners themselves, responsible for approving this completely inappropriate project that would have been better built on our unused football field on the edge of the village; adjacent to the village car park. I also criticise the National Lottery for not listening to objections put to them by members of Parwich societies at a meeting held in the village in August 2008.
From the photograph of the AGM on this website it would appear that only about 30 of the 500 residents of Parwich, Bradbourne, Pikehall and Alsop attended the meeting, so an awful lot of people don’t know what happened. Yet this web site – set up for by the Hall committee specifically for the purpose of communicating about the Hall – has not referred to a single outcome of the AGM apart from publishing the chairman’s report. That’s why I’m astonished.
The information that might have been expected to be covered includes, for example,
– Did any leaders of the committee resign, as rumoured would happen?
– If there were resignations, who took over the helm?
– If the school is exempt for 20 years from paying for its use of this facility, will the new hall be viable?
– Will the whizzo eco-bits that seem already to have broken down in the car park be costly to maintain, once the contractors have gone?
– Will there be a caretaker/gardener, and if there already is one, should we know who this person is?
I’m sure many of these questions were covered at the AGM, and the Hall Committee will be keen to let us all know via this web site. From the Chairman’s report, it would appear that the committee has been a paragon of virtue in communicating with the community, but that’s not my memoriy of it, and that probably goes for ‘Over the Hill’ and ‘Fell runner’, too, although I have no authority to speak for them. Now to the matter of rates to use the hall, which John G, above, has mentioned elsewhere.
I quote from a Planning Decision Notice issued on 27th August 2008 and sent to Mr Gerrard-Pearse giving the go ahead for the new building. Under the paragraph entitled “Approved Use and Hours of Operation” paragraph 3 states:
“The premises shall be used for no other purposes than a building available for hire for local community purposes within Class D2 of the schedule to the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order, 2006.”
Paragraph 4 states:
“The hours of operation of the use hereby permitted shall be restricted to 6.30 am to 12.00 midnight.”
This suggests to me that having hire rates for non-local use breaches this planning decision. Also, having this hall for ‘commercial’ purposes appears not to be allowed. Only ‘community purposes’ – unless hiring out for a local wedding or anniversary is to be regarded as ‘commercial’. Would someone like to clarify what ‘commercial’ means, please?
You can trust that the folk who did not want this hall built will be keeping a hawk-eye on the use it is put to, with the intention of stopping any breaches of the terms under which it was given planning permission. If non-local commercial uses are made of it – Shoe Fairs; Mind, Body and Spirit Fairs, etc – I take the liberty of predicting bitterness and a very unhappy community here in Parwich. And the Peak Park will be informed.
Keith – There is no intention to conceal the minutes of the AGM, which will be published on the blog and made available in the usual places once they have been completed. Printed copies of the chairman’s report were issued at the meeting, and the report has been duly reproduced in full here.
As regards planning permission, it is my understanding – and please correct me if I am wrong – that an initial set of designs were rejected, and a revised set of designs were approved, the revisions having been made in consultation with the Peak Park planning authorities.
Mike A: The comments I quoted from the planners’ report apply to the building we have now, regardless of any subsequent revisions. You can see this if you compare the picture (on this website) of the architect’s concept for the hall, with the real building. You will see they are virtually identical, except for that ’chicken factory’ ventilation tower on top. I tried to submit two photos to demonstrate this but the reply function doesn’t accept pictures.
The recommendation to so thoroughly reject the planning permission was issued only about 10 days before the Planning Committee approved it. Any revisions in the intervening period could be interpreted as window-dressing to justify a political decision to ignore the planners’ real concerns. This may be incorrect, but it is how I see it, and I have reasons for doing so. In a letter to me from the Head of Planning it was conceded that “the changes were relatively minor and perhaps did not address the overall scale of the building…..”. So the planners’ comments about the scale, design and size which I quoted above still stand, revisions or not. But if you suggest that this is all now history, I would tend to agree with you. Time to move on.
Regarding my earlier comment, a villager has asked me to convey the following information, which I am happy to pass on.
“The original plans were not rejected. They were amended in light of the planners’ comments.”
I think it is sad to predict that the new Memorial Hall will result in bitterness and a very unhappy community.
I predict that the vast majority of our community will realise that, like it or loathe it, we have a new Memorial Hall.
I’m going to choose to feel blessed that we are lucky enough to have this facility.
I haven’t been inside yet, but hopefully when I do, it might even make me smile.
:o)
What a miserable series of comments Mr Parson continues to contribute to this blog; attempting to ensure that any joy and pride in our achievement is sucked out of our community. And now we can’t even enjoy ourselves within our new hall and party till late as Mr Parsons and his mythical mates will be watching with binoculars less we invite some-one from Matlock to a party – oh pleeeeezeee!
Forgive the exasperation but when I attempted to write something positive and conciliatory about our lovely new hall on this blog a week or two ago, I was insulted by Mr Parsons and called ‘an amateur psychologist’. One reason, I suspect, why people are loath to voice an opinion.
I, for one, am heartedly fed up with his sniping.
To refresh his memory, the hard work undertaken to build a new hall on the site of the existing one, not the playing field, was commenced as a result of a village vote – in other words, your preference for the football pitch LOST the village vote – and from that point onwards, irrespective of our views (it wasn’t my personal choice either) we should, as a village, have ALL got behind the project then maybe we would have one the we ALL want.
It seems to me that for the last few years Mr Parsons has chosen to remain outside of the lengthy processes involved with decison making (and outside of any hard work or sacrifice of his time) but has continued to be critical of decisons made by others when at no point has he got involved in that decison making (and hard work) himself. A priviledged position indeed.
In short Mr Parsons has attempted to influence negatively, and from the outside, rather than positively by giving of his time and commitment, from the inside. He could for example, have got involved with the detail of the building design, as I might if I lived opposite, and influenced it along the way – rather he chose to await the outcome of the process and then to be publically critical. How easy to let others do all the work and then criticise them when they do things that you don’t like.
Had Mr Parsons, and others, become involved in the project, they may also have gained a greater appreciation of the amount of information required to obtain National Lottery funding. I have just looked at the Lottery website and, fairly logically, they require much information about capital build plans and costings, audit & governance procedures and business planning. It is rather naive to assume that the village received a £500,000 grant of public money for a new hall without the lottery having to be satisied that a) the village could manage that money appropriately and b) that the usage of the resultant hall could be sustained.
The Lottery have very thorough procedures in order to avoid newspaper headlines akin to Mr Parson’s (and others’) thoughts: ‘Lottery gives £500,000 to bunch of rural idiots who can’t add up & who give away so much for free that they are broke within 6 months’. As if.
Our hall obviously had a business plan, which (had he been involved he would know) I suspect does not plan for ‘Shoe Fairs; Mind, Body and Spirit Fairs’ (wot?) but rather for a continuation and expansion of our regular village life with hire charges being maintained due a large reduction in energy outgoings due to the ‘whizzo eco bits’.
There were far more than 30 people at the AGM who could tell you what happened. The other 400 chose not to attend. Their choice. If one is not interested, fine. But if one does want to know what happened then either be there or ask nicely.
In stating that he will keep his hawk’s eyes on the hall, Mr Parsons demonstrates a real inability to move on despite what he says. As Debbie Webster says, it’s here, however it got here. Let’s use it, with joy in our hearts for all of the events that are at the heart of any community – weddings, baptisms, funerals, societies etc etc. I have booked it for my granddaughter’s bithday and I shall use it with a smile (I shall also, however, also employ bouncers to be sure that no-one from Winster is allowed to enter and that no-one mistakes the removal of shoes for bouncy castle useage as the start of a Shoe Fair)