Minutes of Community Pavilion Sub-Committee held on 16th December 2021
The Chairman opened the meeting at 7.00 p.m.
1.Present: Cllr Trevor Batten (chairman), Cllr Pears, Cllr Michal Cassidy, Cllr Carole Batten
2.Absent: Cllr Chapman – reasons accepted
3.Declaration of Interest: none.
4.To Approve the minutes of the last meeting held on 9th December 2021. Approved.
5.Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) borrowing – details. Cllr Pears provided a detailed explanation of how this now works since it has been taken over by the H.M. Treasury. He provided several documents to show the process and produced an assessment of how much various loan amounts would cost the P.C. and the effect this would have on the precept. In summary – the process hasn’t changed since the “takeover” and the gilt-based interest rate remains very similar to what it was last year.
The sub-committee agreed that we will start the procedure for the first stage of this process in January 2022 – this being to obtain “Borrowing Approval”. The first step is to contact LALC and Cllr Batten will do this.
6.Assessing the two plans (A and B). The Trust has agreed for the plan to now be around 136 sq.m. from their original starting point of 98 sq.m. The existing design for Plan A is around 155 sq.m. It was estimated that reducing the Plan A by around 20 sq.m. could reduce the cost by around £23,000.
It was agreed in-principle that we could proceed on the basis of the agreed changes to the original Plan A – this is a compromise of what several councillors have suggested as ways to reduce/change the shape and size of the building. The main change is to remove the “stand-alone” kitchen and incorporate a kitchenette area into the smaller Meeting room. There was also a discussion about the positioning of toilets and the officials room and several ideas were to be considered. Cllr Batten will now go back to the architect in early January to test out the viability of the new ideas for a smaller plan and possibly get new plans drawn up for this.
7. Conclusion. If we don’t get any more money from other funders we now have a plan that is suitable to receive the £70,000 donation from the Trust. This is subject to the architect’s approval of the new design and final assessment of all parties. If other funders are prepared to make donations of sufficient amounts then we will still consider building from the larger, initial plan – possibly not using the money from the Trust. We are expecting a decision from the National Lottery by the middle of January as to whether we have passed their first stage (applications usually have an 80% chance of success if they move on to stage two). The F.A. are still asking questions and showing interest in our scheme.
8.Public Consultation. Once we have new plans drawn up we will go out to further consultation with the interested parties – football club, bowls club, etc.
9.Next Meeting. Thursday February 10th at 7 p.m. at the home of Cllr Michael Cassidy.
The meeting closed at 9.15 p.m.