Warmington Village Hall

It's been a very busy year for your Village Hall Committee. Work started on the extension mid October, but  enabled the main hall to continue in use. The refurbishment of the hall and the provision of a new meeting room started at the beginning of January 2001 and was completed by the 16 February! There were several problems to overcome but daily meetings with the builders, architects, etc., soon resolved them.

I hope you will agree it is certainly a much improved facility for the village. This would not have been possible without the Lottery grant, and a generous donation from Elton Estates Co Ltd, plus donations from village organisations and individuals and of course the funds that we had accumulated over the years.

I would like to thank our regular users that carried on using the hall when perhaps the facilities were not at their best, especially towards the end when the rain started to come in. We even attracted some Scottish Highland Dancing before the hall closed.  I must also thank the School and the Social Club for accommodating our users when the hall finally closed. This helped to reduce the disruption and enabled our regular users to continue meeting.

Special thanks are due to Stephen Turner, Tony Eden, Mick O'Leary, Mike Weston, Derrick Weatherington, Vic Austin and Bill and Morag at the Red Lion who have helped in many ways during the years, at functions, with publicity and who are always there if help is needed. Also thank you to all those who donated raffle prizes etc., and thank you to Ray Rootham (Caretaker) for looking after the hall and making sure it is unlocked and locked.

I must take this opportunity to thank Kate Dalziel for being the main stay of the Warmington Toddler Group for the last seven years. We all hope it will continue to flourish under the new management.

Fund Raising - Our last two events were poorly supported. The accounts may look reasonably healthy but fund raising must still continue to keep the hall in the condition it is now. There should be no major works for many years but there is still general maintenance, cleaning, caretakers wages, insurance costs and bills to pay. Now we have a reasonable car park we need to keep it that way.

We must not get complacent, we still need your support. This is your village hall, we only look after it for you. Fund raising helps to keep the rents reasonable, otherwise they will have to be increased to a more realistic rate.

I finish my report by thanking the Committee and Officers for their support and hard work this year, especially when it was all hands to get the hall clean and tidy and ready for reopening.

Hazel Turner