Grazeley Village Memorial Hall Newsletter - November 2018
The past year has seen many improvements to the Hall in terms of the overall management, financial controls, and maintenance and refurbishment programme.
The move away from cash/cheque to electronic payments has been a huge success with virtually all hirers now paying this way – this has made our accounting and financial controls significantly easier and tighter.
I would like to thank the outgoing committee members: Simon Cooper, who recently stood down as Treasurer, made a significant contribution both to the role of Treasurer and also to overall Hall operations. Our financial controls are now in excellent shape. My thanks to Tracy Round for agreeing to stand for Treasurer this year. Also leaving are Alistair and Carla Winsey who have moved from the village but we look forward to welcoming the new owners of the Old Vicarage, Kim and Matt.
Another leaver is our cleaner, Julie Scott, who worked hard to keep the hall spotless for ten years and I would like to welcome our new cleaner Tracey Owen.
We have held three memorable events over the past year. The Christmas Tree Switch-On, organised by Simon, was a big success and attended by many people from the village who enjoyed mulled wine and delicious mince pies courtesy of Vic’s wife. We will put up a Christmas tree and lights again this week as we received many positive comments on the festive look in the village last year.
More recently Vic presided over a 100th Anniversary Armistice Day Memorial Service where a new plaque was unveiled. The moving service was ended perfectly by a bugler playing the last post. Many thanks to Vic for leading this event and for his continued hard work in organising our Car Boot Sales which raise valuable funds for the hall.
Finally, in March we held the “Great Grazeley Clean Up” where the management committee and families spent over 30 man-hours picking up litter from the side of the roads in and around the village.
Thanks go again this year to Karen for her continued efficient management of our lettings and day to day hall operations despite challenges from website outages and the introduction of our new Hallmaster booking system.
Our refurbishment work has stepped up over the past year both inside and outside the hall.
Outside, an improved maintenance schedule has resulted in the grass and hedges looking lovely and brambles and overgrown areas being trimmed back. Our annual ROSPA inspection came back with a clean bill of health for the play and field areas.
We have new gates leading into the car park and grounds, wooden rubbish bins, new car park fencing, replacement manhole covers, clean windows and gutters and even a new black soil pipe!
In the hall building itself we have new doors and windows, a fully refurbished entrance hall with new storage, and new committee room tables and chairs.
After a successful full electrical survey, we have had new electric cooker wiring installed and energy efficient radiators in the toilets which have proven highly effective. Our old, unreliable gas cooker will soon be replaced by a low-maintenance fully electric model.
Over the coming year we can look forward to the next tranche of refurbishment projects ranging from essential repairs to the committee room floor, complete re-decoration of the main hall, sanding and re-varnishing of the hall floor and replacement of old electric heaters and light bulbs with new energy efficient models.
Finally my thanks must go to the whole management committee team without whose commitment, time and support it would be impossible to keep the hall running for the benefit of the local community.
Paul Earwaker
Chairman GVMH
26th November 2018
