December 9th 2021 - minutes of Pavilion sub-committee meeting
Minutes of Community Pavilion Sub-Committee held on 9th December 2021 (approved)
The Chairman opened the meeting at 7.07 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 4th November 2021. Approved.
5.Update on Funding Applications. Two applications have been submitted to The National Lottery and The F.A. Foundation. The results are anticipated in approximately 10 weeks from today i.e. end Feb / early March 2022. We are encouraged by the F.A. Foundation asking many questions to substantiate the application.
6.Implications of funding and the setting of the precept for 2022-23.
Cllr Pears - There are problems in knowing how much to add to the precept for 2022/2023 when we don’t know how much money (if any) will be donated to the project. The precept has to be set by January 28th 2022 and if we don’t set it at a level to accommodate a building loan we cannot do so until the next financial year of 2023/24. This would mean that we could not proceed with any building work for at least a year. Conversely if we go ahead and set the precept with an increase to fund the building loan but we then receive a donation from funders of the full amount – we will have money that we no longer need for the project and will have increased the precept without the need to do so. It was agreed that we should establish that there was no legal jeopardy to the P.C. by acquiring money that we may no longer need. After further discussion we decided to recommend to the full P.C. that we should proceed to set a budget that incorporated this increase to the precept, taking the view that if the need arises we could adjust the finances for the following financial year of 2023/24.
7.Public Works Loan Board. It is known that this has been superseded by the Treasury taking control. It was agreed that Cllr Pears would find out the full details of the new scheme, interest rates, terms and conditions, etc.
8.Information for the public. It was agreed that we need to keep the public informed about progress in order to ensure that they were not surprised if the precept changed more than usual. This to be done as the first part of our pledge to “ask for their approval” again. We agreed to update the website pages with the latest progress and latest estimated costings. We would also remind them of the survey result and the potential effect on the precept for 2022/23 and we would stress that if NO additional funding is received towards the cost of it – the scheme will be dead.
We will ask for comments, observations and questions from the public by email.
Cllr Pears reminded everyone that the P.C. had agreed that they did not want to pay out a further £350 for another year’s “Survey Monkey” subscription in order to do online surveys and this had been cancelled.
9.Current estimates of building costs. The current estimate for the Plan A (the design as approved for Planning Permission) is £155,000 which is around £35,000 more than when we started. The P.C. now have £20,000 in a ring-fenced fund. We agreed that we should ideally have £160,000 to £170,000 in available funds to cover contingencies.
10.Discussion about changes needed to meet a brief that satisfies the requirements for the £70,000 Trust donation.
It was pointed out that the plan in its current form is not acceptable for the donation to be made. A long discussion ensued about the relevant advantages / disadvantages with Plan A and the donor’s smaller plan. It was agreed that Plan A was currently too large and the smaller plan (Plan B) was too small – mainly due to the sizes of the meeting room. It was agreed that there was room for compromise on the plan and we were optimistic that an agreement could be reached. However, this compromise only comes into effect if no other funding becomes available. If further funding is achieved, Plan A, as per the planning permission obtained, will be implemented if possible.
It was agreed that we would obtain further large copies of the plan A and each of us would amend it before we meet up again in an attempt to settle on a design. We would then sit down with our architect to explore the viability of it and discover any potential problems with a view to submitting it back to the Planning Dept for reapproval.
11.Next Meeting. Thursday December 16th at 7 p.m. at the same venue.
The meeting closed at 8.55 p.m.