CPC 2022 Minutes

Minutes of the Community Pavilion Sub-Committee meeting of Cranwell, Brauncewell & Byard's Leap Parish Council

Minutes of the Community Pavilion Sub-Committee meeting of Cranwell, Brauncewell and Byard's Leap Parish Council held on Monday 1st August 2022 at 7:00 pm.

Participating: Chairman: Cllr Mr T Batten

Councillors: Cllr Mr M Pears, Cllr Mrs M Cassidy, Cllr Mr M Cassidy, Mrs C Batten, Cllr Mr M Collier.

The meeting was opened at 7.15 p.m.

The Chairman confirmed the results of the survey performed by the Quantity Surveyor to establish a current, realistic price for the building of the new Pavilion.  This was reported as £274,000.  Cllr T.Batten expressed his disappointment at this high price which is now double what we were initially quoted by a builder.  He also stated that in his opinion the quoted £17,000 for the demolition and disposal of the existing portacabin was excessively high.  Cllr Batten’s views were confirmed by all the other members of the committee.

A brief discussion ensued as to whether it was realistic to consider going back to the public to request their approval for increasing the Council’s borrowing from the current £94,000 to around £190,000. This was unanimously considered as impractical due to the current financial pressure on families and the resultant negative attitudes to more rising costs.  It was agreed that without more large grants from somewhere the project could not continue in it’s present form.

The current condition of the Portacabins was discussed.  Cllr M. Cassidy expressed his concern about the state of the buildings and said that he considered them to now be a Health & Safety risk.  One of them is already closed off due to rot, mould etc and the other one is going the same way.  It was unanimously agreed that they now constituted a major H&S risk and should be demolished as soon as possible.  Cllr M.Cassidy agreed that he would investigate the process / costs etc of its removal to report back to the Committee.  Cllr T.Batten was concerned about the effect that it’s removal might have on the Bowls Club and the Junior Football Club and he agreed to hold a meeting as soon as possible with representatives of both to warn them of the action being taken.

Cllr Pears pointed out that during research he had become aware of three Parish Councils that had gained funding from national organisations; our attempts had produced nothing except a possible promise of a small amount from the F.A.  He had been contacted by a Chairman of a Cambridgeshire

P.C. about a similar matter and during that conversation he had been told that they had been awarded a sum of nearly £100,000 from the National Lottery to build their Sports Pavilion.  Also he had seen in the LALC Annual Report that Nettleham P.C. had gained £25,000 from the Football Foundation Trust towards the £80,000 cost of refurbishing their sports pavilion and Ruskington P.C. had been awarded £98,000 from the “FCC Community Foundation” to refurbish a Play Area.  It was agreed that these should be followed up for more information to see whether there was something else that we could do.  Cllr Pears agreed to seek out more information on this as the first step in our “new process”.
It was also agreed that Cllrs T.Batten and M.Cassidy would investigate any cheaper options to our current plan in order to achieve the construction of a Community Pavilion within a smaller budget.

The final aspect of this “first step” would be publishing to the public an update of where we stand on this now and the details of the demolition of the portacabins. This would be done on our website, on Facebook and via a Mailchimp Newsletter.
It was agreed that once we had acquired all the information from the above, we would put together various options to put to the public in another “Surveymonkey” and leaflet questionnaire for them to tell us how to proceed.  If no further funding was forthcoming we would look at whether there were smaller, cheaper options for us to consider and we would have to offer the option of not continuing the project in any form.  It was then noted that we would have to consider what to do with the money raised by the public for the scheme as it is currently not the Council’s money.

The meeting closed at 8.30 p.m.