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Grant Turned Down Again!

Once again Furneux Pelham Village hall has had an application for a grant turned down. This time by the Onyx Trust which is a foundation set up to provide grants for local communities close to land fill sites. This is another example of England’s small communities being ignored when it comes to raising funds to improve our facilities. Think about it: - The council never clean our roads, the pot-holes remain as pot-holes until the level of complaint from the parish council forces someone to come and throw a bucket of tar at them, we have a miserable excuse for a bus service, we have no village store, doctors surgery or post office but we do have an eyesore wood yard which the council are happy to dump here because we do not have enough votes to be important. If we want anything we have to provide it ourselves. The village hall is our post office, doctors surgery, home to the mother and toddlers, the football team, the local band, it provides a venue for parties in fact, if you think about it, it’s all we’ve got; so why is it that every time we try to raise money to improve it we are turned down?
When submitting an application for a grant, the time and cost involved can be substantial. Firstly you need to make sure that the original building is sound enough to take such an extension. This involves paying for a structural survey. Then you need to involve architects to draw up the plans in such a way that they will receive planning permission. Then you have to apply for the planning permission, as you cannot submit a grant application without having planning permission in place. After doing all that you make a preliminary application for a grant.
Having already been turned down by East Herts County Council on the grounds that we have no areas of depravation, and the National Lottery who’s reasons I will not print, the Onyx trust told us that we met all the criteria and it was being referred to the board for final approval. We then go to all the work involved in copying plans and gathering together the copious papers they want in order to make the final assessment. After all this they turn us down because “there are more needy causes”. I would love to see these “more needy causes” information of course, which they will not give.
We have no disabled toilets, which is a European Community requirement. As the village hall is old and built on different levels, there is nowhere to put disabled toilets other than housing them in a new extension. The Onyx Trust has said that, even if the application was approved, they could only fund the disabled toilets and not the building they are going to be housed in. For some reason the fact that we intend to house the Post Office and the doctor’s surgery waiting room in the same extension, is causing them a problem.
Needless to say we are going to appeal against their decision and will keep you posted. Meanwhile, if anyone in Furneux Pelham is prepared to write in and voice displeasure at having been turned down, it will make our appeal stronger.
The address to write to is:
The Onyx Environmental Trust, (Attn Margaret Cobbold) Ruthdene, Station Road, Four Ashes, Wolverhampton. WV10 7DG

Ron Martin
Chair Furneux Village Hall Management Committee