We get praised for the facilities that we now have after our last redevelopment but some may not appreciate that all that happened in the Hall was a lick of paint, removal of a stage and a change in the heaters. Most of the floor dates back to 1895 and has health and safety issues now for some users.

At The URCiC AGM in April I supplied a breakdown of possible costs in three sections. The first is work on the floor, heating and lighting of the Hall. The second is for double glazing the windows, drainage improvements and some stonework that is becoming unsafe. The third includes more stonework and the requirements if we remove the false ceiling in the Hall as that would mean we needed to insulate the roof including lifting and relaying the tiles. Each section could, with professional fees, cost over £100,000.

The Hall heating has to be replaced this summer as it has failed but work on the floor cannot be done before next summer as it requires some three months to complete and needs to be planned well in advance so as to minimise the disruption to our regular users. The floor work is a major exercise as we need to excavate and install proper foundations where none exist currently. We should then end up with a sprung floor that can cope with dancing. The heating work will be arranged to avoid lifting the floor this year but extra cabling and piping may be underfloor next year.

The professionals advise that doing all work at once is the best and least expensive option but that is unlikely to be possible financially. The question then becomes "How are we going to finance this work?" The answer is that we will shortly launch a new Redevelopment Appeal with the intention of using the fact that we now have a large range of users as a way of improving our chances of obtaining external funding. However it will still mean we need to return to the joint efforts we made to raise the funds last time even if many of us are less active than we were 10 years ago.

Initial impressions are that it may take us several years to resolve these issues. Section 3 may be work that we can decide is an extra we would like but cannot justify. However even then we will need to do work on the hidden St Andrew‟s window as it is as unsafe as the Rose Window was before repair.

We have received a donation from the family of Alison Riddell and that will start this round of fundraising, particularly to help with replacement heating this year. In addition Lizzie George has already organised the first fundraising even on 22 May.