00:00Hello. This is in no way to home, Ryan.
00:07Firstly, we're very grateful to be included in this evening.
00:10I'm Sally and I'm with Catherine and Faye.
00:13We are three of the trustees of the London Centre Village Hall.
00:17So what does that mean, being a trustee of the hall?
00:19So it means that, like many of you that are homeowners,
00:22we are responsible for everything.
00:25Utilities, maintenance, repairs, improvements, inside and out,
00:31and future-proofing the village hall.
00:33So why are we here?
00:34We're asking for £20,000 towards the functioning catering kitchen.
00:40I'm going to hand over to Catherine and I'm going to talk a bit more about that.
00:44Okay, hello everyone.
00:46You probably know the village hall, and if you don't, why don't you?
00:49You need to come and visit.
00:51But what I will say, the village hall is really well used in the evening.
00:54So it's used by Balls of Stone, they're always quiet.
00:57We've got yoga, we've got book club, we've got Balls of Stone Quilters.
01:01We've got a crack club and many other groups use them all.
01:05But in the day, it's less well used.
01:07And partly that's if it's the kitchen, it's not fit for purpose.
01:11We do a lot of fundraising for our cream teams.
01:13But our kitchen at the moment is, the oven doesn't work very well,
01:19and we do all of our catering off-site when we do a cream team.
01:22So that's why we're wanting to, as Sammy said, future-proof the kitchen.
01:27Because as it is, it's underused during the day.
01:30We want it to be more of a community hub in the day.
01:33The friendship lunches, retirement groups, children's clubs.
01:37We're very, very busy with parties at weekends, weddings, funerals.
01:42All kinds of different celebrations, christenings and birthday parties.
01:46But we know that we could do more if the kitchen was in a better state.
01:52I'm going to hand over to Faye now, who's our treasurer,
01:55who will tell you a bit about our numbers.
01:58So our village halls is at the stage predominantly through our rental income.
02:05As with many halls, Covid had a huge detrimental impact on our finances.
02:11Nobody could meet, so the hall wasn't used, it wasn't rented,
02:15but our insurance, our bills and our utilities still had to be paid.
02:20This meant our terminally-built children in Brazil became severely depleted.
02:26We've spent five years since Covid working hard to build up our rentals once again
02:31and robustly fundraise to get back to where we were.
02:35Last year, we all raised £7,000 in rentals.
02:40Our utilities, our rates and our insurance costed £10,500,
02:45leaving a £3,500 deficit, which we needed to bridge.
02:49So the trustees did this throughout the great event.
02:58Our cream tees, our Mother's Day events, our craft and Christmas fairs
03:02helped us to raise £5,000.
03:05So this late left us with £1,500 in surplus to put towards our new kitchen.
03:12So we asked a local catering kitchen company, well a few, to give us a quote.
03:18And the best one came in, the equipment, at £17,000.
03:23The modelling, floors, walls and fitting, further £16,000.
03:27So a new kitchen that meets current regulation that it is a catering kitchen for what we need is £33,000.
03:37So without one grazing alone, it would take us here 30 years to take the kitchen.
03:43Which is why the three of us are travelling, it's difficult to be at the end today.
03:48So I've been listening to everybody, but I think everyone deserves the money.
03:57When you've gone around and talked to everybody who's asking first up to date,
04:00everyone's shown support for their own project.
04:02I think it's great to see everybody working really hard for our community,
04:07the wider community, about all of us.
04:09We've all seen small villages like that.
04:13We once had a school, a garage, a shop.
04:16And they've all got the place still here, along with the plumbing toilets and the telephone box.
04:22It still remains really popular.
04:24Come rain or shine there are always people in the village, walking, running, cycling and knitting.
04:29We even have a bus, if you haven't been before, you can't even find a bus.
04:34And we can't just go out and get the stands of kitchens.
04:37Oh my god!
04:40We need a, what is that word there?
04:43A catering kitchen, that's right.
04:45So we can actually plan for the future.
04:48So we have a persuasion with that word.
04:50We have given you cake, which I know I've seen all of you.
04:53You can't go on that, but you can't.
04:55Through the meat and the plain goods.
04:57So, yes, that's it.
05:00Good luck to all of you.
05:09Sally, Catherine, Fen.
05:11Thank you very much indeed.
05:13And next...
