Beech Village Hall and Recreation Ground

Continued Consolidation

The past twelve months, like 2006, has been a period of continued consolidation and gradual advancement in seeing the development of Beech Village Hall becoming a reality. There has been a steady, planned progress in establishing the sources of funding for the Hall's necessary improvements. More of this in a moment.

As reported in the autumn a newly elected Board of Trustees is now in place and has already met to ensure that the 2008 programme continues to attract the level of numbers and funds that have been generated each year over the past two years. There were two changes to the Board and the Committee for the year 2007-2008 is as follows.

Elected Trustees:

Peter Cox (Chairman)
Phil Ladds (Treasurer)
Carol Smallman (Social Events)
Eric Siggs (Maintenance of Hall & Grounds)
Sally Leech (Secretary)
Keelie McDowell *

Co-opted Trustees

Margaret Avery
Helen Jayalath

Representative Member Trustees

Colin Childes (Beech Gardening Club)
Helen Lamb (Beech Ladies Group)
Caroline Ward (St Peter's Church)

Bookings Secretary: (Non-Trustee) Cheryl Thomas

* Denotes new trustee

The past twelve months has seen a number of events organised by the Committee and I hope that you have all found these to be worthwhile.

Social Evening Volunteers

I would like to make a special mention of the Social Evenings that were introduced a year ago. These have proved to be very successful and it has been decided to continue running these evenings whilst they remain popular. However, for them to continue we do need volunteers to help run these evenings, especially to help with the provision of food (expenses covered) or help in the bar area.

I would anticipate that each volunteer would need only to do it once a year. We are covered up to and including March, so would those of you who are willing to offer your services (last Friday of the month) please let me know by emailing me on beechvillagehall.yahoo.co.uk .

Village Hall Events

The Village Hall continues to survive, both structurally and financially. Attendance at social events has been excellent, even to the degree that on some occasions we have had to turn people away. So a good lesson is - if you want tickets for an event, make contact as soon as it is advertsied via flyers or on the notice boards. Apologies to those who were unable to get tickets for the Adult Christmas Party, but the tickets were sold out before we had even advertised the event. Bookings for hire of the Hall continue to be very poor, but we expect this is due to the condition of the structure and the well-below required standard facilities.

Hall Upgrade

So this brings us on to the subject of the upgrading of the building and its amenities.

The Village Hall Development Committee has continued working on plans to modernise the Hall in order to make it far more user-friendly and compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act, Health and Safety and Hygiene requirements. As previously reported we made and application to the Big Lottery Fund in April 2007 and were happy to announce that we had been accepted into Stage 1 of the process. The Trustees are confident that if we can meet all the requirements set out by the Big Lottery we would hope to be accepted into Stage 2. It will be a mammoth task and I would like to take the opportunity here to thank all those working on these development plans for all their time and efforts in bringing this dream into a possible reality.

Centre of the Community

It is our Village Hall, not the Trustees, neither solely for those who like to sing, dance and be merry. The Village Hall is Beech, not the pub (we have not got one), not the shop (we have not got one), and not the Community Centre (we do not want one), but it is I suggest, the Centre of our Community. Let me know, or any other of my fellow Trustees, how you can help us achieve some, or indeed all, of these goals. Contact us either in person, by letter, telephone, email, carrier pigeon, balloon or semaphore!

Anyone wishing to contact the Committee can do so via the Chairman by e-mailing: or by post at the Hall.

Peter Cox
Chairman