AGM Minutes: 22 May 2024

The minutes from the latest AGM are attached. If you would like more information, please contact the Secretary.

Minutes of Annual General Meeting

Wednesday 22 May 2024, 7:30pm

These were accepted as a true record and there were no matters arising.

Introduction

Welcome to the AGM of Mursley Village Hall (MVH).

This AGM relates to the year to March 2024.  It has been a successful year in terms of bookings and events.

We remain a small Committee (currently 5) and the Committee has worked hard to maintain the hall and keep it in good condition, including helping with maintenance and events.

Finances

The Treasurer, David Bartlett, will be presenting the year’s Treasurer’s report shortly.  It has been a successful year in terms of events and fundraising, which has been necessary in order to maintain MVH to a high standard and meet ongoing maintenance and improvement costs.

Thank you, David, for your role and guidance as Treasurer.

Bookings

We are grateful for the work done by Caroline Stimpson as Bookings Secretary, who handed over this role to Maggie Luxton last year.  Maggie has done a tremendous job in taking over what is often a busy and time-consuming role.

We have a good number of regular bookers, but also continue to attract larger events from outside the village.  The larger events have sometimes caused issues with parking and noise and the Committee have recognised the impact these have on the village and in particular local residents.  The number of outside larger events has been restricted and clear guidance has been issued to the bookers about the use of MVH and its facilities.  These events are a necessary and vital source of funding for MVH if we are to continue to provide a well-kept and maintained facility.

Maintenance and refurbishment

The major refurbishment during the year was the completion of the pitched roof, so the entire roof covering has now been replaced.  We are grateful to the funding from FCC Communities Foundation, which made a considerable contribution to the project and without which we would have been unable to complete the work.  It was also necessary for MVH to contribute to such projects, as is always the case, and therefore vital that we are able to build up a surplus of funds to go towards such projects.

We suffered an ingress of water, mainly in the hall last year, but since the pitched roof has been replaced, this work appears to have solved the problem.  There is some redecoration to the hall and kitchen areas that needs to be completed.

Damage has been caused to the exit ramp by the fire doors and costings are being obtained for this to be repaired.

There are continual ongoing maintenance and repairs required and we are very grateful to David Bush who has taken on and completed a number of these maintenance issues.

We are currently looking at other projects and Barry Agnew (former Committee member and Chairman) has kindly volunteered to seek grants for these.  This is currently in progress.

Caretaker

We are extremely grateful to our wonderful caretaking team of Roger and Avril Gurnett and Robyn Vaughan.  They keep MVH in pristine condition, often going over and above their role.  Thank you to all of you.

Events

We continue to hold tripartite events with St Mary’s Church and Mursley Sports Association, a combination which I believe has worked well over the last few years.  The intention is to have three events a year, with each of the organisations taking a lead role on one of them.  The events are generally well supported and a good means of fundraising for all three organisations.  This year there has been the Burns Night supper (January) with Hoe Down and Hog Roast in June and in October the Artisan Food and Drink Festival.

Individually, the Committee considers events and particularly the Quiz Night (organised by David Bartlett) has been a long-running and successful event.

Website

Thanks to Liz Hagger for her perseverance with the web site which is now up and running and now hosts details of what goes on at MVH.  Thank you, Liz, for the time you put in on this.  Thank you also for the donation from The School House Trust which enabled Liz to attend some valuable website training.

Mursley Parish Council

We are grateful to the MPC for a donation raised through the Parish Precept.  These funds will be used for ongoing improvements to MVH.

Committee

We remain an exceedingly small Committee of five active members, some of whom are of long standing.  It is necessary for the benefit of the village to maintain MVH and we are as always looking for people who would be willing to take an active role on the Committee or those that are prepared to assist with some of the events.

We continued to enjoy high usage of MVH during the year with the value of bookings during the year being £17,643, of which £17,309 was received during the year.  This is far higher than pre Covid-19 levels where lettings income was between £12,000 and £14,000 a year.

We also organised and participated in five fund raising events during the year.  These raised £3,082 (2023-24: £5,646) from 9 events, some of which were run jointly with Mursley Sports Association and St Mary’s Church.

We also received a donation from the surplus cash held in the Mursley STUMP fund via Mursley Parish Council of £1,687.

This letting income, fundraising and donations enabled us to fully complete the installation of the new roof during the year making the hall watertight again.  The total roof repairs cost £81,632.  Thankfully, we received grants totalling £49,399 from FCC Recycling so that these repairs could be completed without decimating MVH reserves.

We now need to redecorate areas of the hall as a result of water damage over the last few years, which is planned for the current year.

We are also seeking grants to enable us to replace the shutters in the kitchen and bar area, do a limited refurbishment of the kitchen area and replace the three sets of main fire exit and entry doors, which are at the end of their expected life.  The total cost of these works is expected to be around £30,000 and we are therefore looking at obtaining grants which would cover at least half of these costs.  Several grant applications have been made and we are awaiting the outcome of these applications.

We have recently received a donation from Mursley Parish Council of £3,000 for improvements and refurbishments and this has been earmarked for use on this project.

At 31 March 2024 we had cash at bank of £28,244 compared to our minimum level of reserves set by the Trustees of £15,000 and £30,519 at 31 March 2023.

Income from village hall hire April 2023 – March 2024

As documented by the Treasurer at the year end on 31 March 2024 total income was £17, 643.  Thanks to David Bartlett, Treasurer, for advice and updates re booking payments and transactions.

Hall hire rates

The trustees agreed from 1 April 2023 the external event hire fees would increase but there would be no increase in local and block booking fees.  From 1 April 2024 it is proposed to increase the external event hire fees again and from 1 July 2024 a small increase in local event hire and block booking rates.  The attached document reflects MVH fee rates for all bookings as from 1 July 2024.

Caretaker

Caretaker Robyn Vaughan resigned from her role in October 2023 and the trustees accepted an application from Avril Gurnett to replace Robyn.  The trustees thank Robyn for her excellent performance in the role and also wish to stress their huge appreciation and thanks to Avril (and Roger) for continuing as Caretaker and providing such an efficient and reliable job of ensuring the hall is open for users and is maintained in such a clean and presentable condition.  Communication with the Caretaker is always excellent and the prompt responses are very much appreciated.

Bookings policy / procedure

The trustees continue to monitor the number of single non-residential / local events held in the hall to minimise the potential disturbance to properties neighbouring MVH.  The objective continues to be to keep these single events to a frequency that still allows for essential funds to be raised but with the least potential disturbance.

Most booking enquiries come through the email: mursleyvhbookings@gmail.com and occasionally by phone / text.  Responses to new enquiries and existing bookings are made as soon as possible by the Bookings Clerk.  The new web site includes access to information about hiring rates and terms and conditions, plus details of regular groups and activities held at MVH.

Current regular bookings

The MVH web site www.mursleyvillagehall.com provides information on our regular hall users.  Over the past year we have continued to attract regular block bookings from:

Village events April 2023 – March 2024

The following events were held during the year:

• Mursley and Drayton Parslow Schools Coronation event
• Midsummer Mursley (tripartite event)
• Three Schools Christmas and Summer Discos   
• Mussel Night
• Mursley School Celebration Assemblies (termly)
• Mursley School Christmas and End of Year rehearsals and show
• Artisan Food and Drink Festival (tripartite event)
• St Mary’s Church Harvest Lunch
• Mursley Village Christmas Lunch
• Burns Night (tripartite event)
• Quiz Night

Individual hall hire bookings

All the current committee members were happy to continue, so the Committee stands as follows.

Duncan Jones had presented a question in advance of the AGM.

“What do the Committee think about charging fees for the hire of the village hall for events that are local in nature, support local charities and where other venues can be / have been used free of charge for such events?”

The following response was presented by Nick Webb on behalf of the Committee.

Thank you to Duncan for his question.

Mursley Village Hall (MVH) is also a registered charity and is run by a Committee of trustee volunteers who have a legal responsibility to keep MVH open by ensuring that we have sufficient funds to cover maintenance, repairs and improvements along with overhead costs for electricity, heating, annual checks on fire extinguishers, boiler, insurance and the caretaker’s salary.

There are several ways in which we fund these costs.

1. By hiring MVH out to regular users with a block booking rate, which benefits the community as well as being open to non-residents.  Currently these include Women’s Institute (charity), Bridge Club and Table Tennis Club (both not for profit organisations), North Bucks Art Group (charity), Yoga, Fitness Class, Gong Sound Bath and Parish Council meetings.

• By hiring MVH to Mursley School for PE classes during the winter, end of term assemblies, rehearsals and shows, during the year and at Christmas.  The three schools (Mursley, Swanbourne and Drayton Parslow) also hire MVH for shared events and are all registered charities.

• By hiring MVH for single local events eg Mussel Night, Harvest Lunch, Village Christmas Lunch, Mursley Singers, Village Show, exhibitions eg the Play Area and Village Photographic Exhibitions (all charitable fundraisers, but not all registered charities).  Single bookings include personal bookings for weddings, birthday parties, family gatherings, residents’ funeral refreshments etc, which are non-charitable.

• By hiring MVH for external events, large and small.  Following communications with nearby residents, the Committee have reduced the number of these events in consideration of noise and traffic issues.  We also hold all local elections, which are paid for by Buckinghamshire Council.

• By organising and holding fundraising events.  These include the Annual Quiz Night (proceeds solely to MVH), and three large events run jointly by MVH, MSA and the Church – examples this year are Burns Night, Hoe Down and Hog Roast, and the Mursley Artisan Food and Drink Festival.  By sharing these events, all three charities can benefit from increased labour from our individual small but very active Committee members.  The profits are shared equally between the three charities and MVH pays the hall overhead costs.

We do offer a discounted rate for specific charity events which are in the village interest eg the recent Play Area exhibition and residents’ funeral refreshments / wakes.

We appreciate that other, smaller, hireable venues in the village have offered their venues free of charge at times and respect that this is financially viable for them.  We have had requests for the same “free access” at MVH over the years.  How do you choose which charities are more worthy than others?  Most of our local events are for charities or fundraisers for charities.  The overheads would still need to be covered and, therefore, subsidised by others and we have to be fair to all residents.  We have kept our Local Rates to a minimum and increased the External Rates considerably in order to keep MVH as accessible as possible to local residents.  If we were to remove the charges for these local fundraising / charitable events we would need subsidies of approximately £8,000 pa to cover costs, which would need to be provided by either increasing other hire charges or requesting a grant from the Parish Council.

Our accounts are available for viewing and they show clearly our income, costs and our current financial position, which includes a small contingency sum.

Discussion followed.

SH: thanks to the trustees for paying the £40 hiring charge for the Play Area exhibition.

SH: the Rectory Room and the Church did not charge for Village Show rehearsals.

NW: their sole purpose is not to be hired out for events / activities, which is the sole purpose of the village hall.

DB: also confirmed that historically the Village Show run by the Mursley Players has always been charged a hire fee for both rehearsals and the show days.

SH: people had asked why MVH was not a beneficiary of profits from the recent Village Show and suggested that had we offered the village hall for some free rehearsals that it might have been.

DB: replied that we charged our hire rates as per usual.  Relying on undetermined income from an event that was run completely separately from the MVH was not generally considered appropriate.

SB: asked about the frequency of large non-local events and ML replied that the Committee’s aim was to allow 1 per month / 4 weeks.

ML: as shown in her report there were 13 non-local Saturday / Sunday events over the 23 / 24 year and from recollection about 6 enquiries were turned away.  Each Saturday non-local event was charged at a fee of £450.

CS: added that a weekend big event can cover Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday morning for a charge of £650, so the hall is then in use all weekend.

SH: asked if there were plans to reduce the noise in the main hall by repairing the kitchen shutters and also about getting a dishwasher. 

NW: replied that currently trying to seek grants to help raise funds to replace kitchen shutters.

DB: a dishwasher is under consideration, but not a simple solution.

Mursley Village Hall Annual General Meeting finished at 8:23pm.