Parkside Hall AGM 10th April 2017
Another busy year for the trustees, management committee and volunteers of Parkside Hall.
The hall, now in its 4th year since major refurbishment continues to develop its service offering to the local community. It strives to build and maintain a healthy operating margin to protect itself in the long term and ensure the ongoing viability of the hall for the people of Ampthill and the surrounding villages.
Area’s of focus during 2016 were as follows:
- Fund raising continues to be of prime concern for the trustees to ensure financial stability. This year the very successful ‘Anthill Comedy Club’ has continued to provide significant fund raising for Parkside Hall. Three events were held this year, with sell out audiences enjoying the London Comedy scenes finest in rural mid Bedfordshire. Thanks go to Margie Hudson for her continued support in organising these events, despite a hectic personal and professional life. The trustees are pleased that we plan to hold another 3 events in 2017.
- Parkside Hall food fair was held in the Spring & Autumn of this year, again providing a good source of fund raising for the Hall. This event takes a lot of organisation and involves the coordination of many stall holders, again Margie Hudson was a key factor behind the success of these events. The autumn 2017 event is now in planning with Kirsty Bourne taking over the stewardship, I’m sure it will be a continued success.
- We have continued with our resolution from AGM 2015 to migrate to a CIO. Thanks go to our pro bono notary Anthony Northey who is progressing this for us via the Charity Commission. The new CIO charity has been established, bank accounts have been transferred to the new charity (including significant disruption, courtesy of Nat West – smoothed out by Treasurer Brian Russell) and our land registry assets are in the process of transfer. It is expected that we will complete the formal transfer by the end of the current financial year, followed by the demise of the old charity.
- Changes to pension law have created an additional administrative overhead this year, resulting in Parkside Hall having to take on a pension consultancy firm to oversee our statutory requirements. Meetings have been held with both staff members, who have taken advice and elected to opt out of the scheme. Our notification back to the pension regulator will complete by the end of March 2017.
- Medium term planning has been taking place with regard to the day to day hire process for Parkside Hall. An independent IT company Intrada were invited to provide consultation advice for the upgrading of the Parkside Hall website and associated social media. Following a successful meeting they were commissioned to replace the existing website, and incorporate a much simpler online booking enquiry system to reduce administrative activity. The new website went live in early March, and is significantly better that our old website. Thanks go to Brian Russell and Eileen Summerfield for leading on the interaction with Intrada.
- Meeting room 1 has undergone a £15,000 soundproofing exercise this year. Although our meeting rooms are proving very popular across all demographics of hirers, we have lost bookings when noisy events have been taking place in the main hall. As a result of the soundproofing the impact of noisy events is much reduced. Plans are in place to complete similar works to meeting room 2 and also lobby doors. Roy Tebbutt has submitted a grant application to Biffa to fund this work.
- Excessive temperature of the main hall continues to be a problem even in winter time, and although we have had 3 quotes for air conditioning (approx. £16k) the trustees have not placed an order for this work to be carried out. An additional grant application is being submitted to Mick George plc. For these works to be carried out. If successful these works will be very intrusive to the operation of the hall, and will require the complete closure of the hall for at least one week.
- Other ongoing maintenance and estate operation works have been progressing throughout the year. Steve Todd has been working with Central Beds to finalise and complete the arrangement with the Coroners court to allow parking (by permit) in the Hall car park. This was part of the agreement to resurface the ex-Netball courts and repair the existing surfaces. Steve is still working to ensure snagging works to the resurfacing are carried out to our satisfaction. In addition to resolving ad hoc maintenance issues with our contracted maintenance agents, Steve has managed to get permanent repairs done to our self-actuating windows which have been a source of ongoing problems. Hopefully this problem is now eradicated.
- Storage is a problem at the hall, and as part of our storage plan we have purchased a ‘half size’ container to provide additional external storage. The ground work was prepared free of charge by Andy Teague in return for allowing some building skips to be sited at Parkside. The trustees now need to provide external screening for the cabin and to fit out internally to avoid condensation. In addition the stage doors are in need of replacement so that under stage storage is more accessible, this will incur additional cost of £1.5k. Much of our onsite work is carried out by Terry White and our thanks go to him for his flexibility and helpful approach in keeping Parkside in good order.
Parkside has a small and committed band of volunteers that keep the hall opened up the various hirers on a day to day basis. To recognize and thank them for this support a ‘Volunteer meal’ was held at the White Hart in early February, and was enjoyed by the 30+ volunteers who attended.
Thanks must also go to our paid staff, Linda White (caretaker) and Jenny McKay (Volunteer/Weekend manager) for all their combined efforts in making the hall the superb venue it is, enjoyed by so many different and diverse community and business organisations.
My thanks go to the trustees and management committee members for their ongoing support, Doreen Stodart, Roy Tebbutt, Steve Todd, Eileen Summerfield, Ann Russell and Brian Russell.
Andy Wood
Chairman – Parkside Community Hall
30th March 2017