Proposed new hall
News update: Planning Permission for the new hall at Effingham has now been granted by Guildford Borough Council (November 2011)
Drawings as submitted for planning:
Revised site plan with car parking changes
Background to Meeting of April 10th 2011
The sale of St Alphege has been complicated and protracted but now has been completed and, after expenses, approximately £900,000 will remain. The obvious questions arising are, “What happens to the available funds?” and, assuming that money is available to the parish “What should it be spent on?”.
In fact while the funds from the sale belong in principle to the Parish it is expected that a proportion is allocated to the Diocese. The proportion available to each is not clearly defined but depends on circumstances and discussions. In particular if the Parish has identified a need and its feasibility and associated costs it may make the case to the Diocese to retain a large proportion of the funds, but if there are no plans in place the Parish is likely to have a much reduced share.
As a corollary of this it is in the interests of the Parish to identify any likely need for expenditure and present the case for this to the Diocese in order to retain the necessary amount.
So what projects should the Parish be considering? Clearly it is desirable that the Parish identifies a specific requirement and the prominent contender is a replacement building for the Church Hall and at its September 2010 meeting the Pastoral Parish Council recommended that a strategic plan for the Parish should be established and should include planning for the possible replacement of the Parish Hall.
In October Father John asked Michael Henderson to set up an Advisory Group to look into these issues. This has been set up and has included representatives of the Finance Committee ( Dan Meehan and Tony Farino) and the Pastoral Parish Council ( Chris Speirs, Keith Walker and past Chairman Michael Bray). The strategy of the group has been to review all possible development projects taking a long term view of likely Parish developments over the years to come. It seems particularly appropriate to take the longer view as we approach the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Parish.
Before considering any potential wish-list the Parish has a responsibility to consider the maintenance spending issues which are required under the Quinquennial Review. This is a Diocesan requirement under which each Parish has to review the cost relating to maintenance and renovation over the next five years. To comply with this a review was conducted in November and December last year by Chawton Hill Chartered Surveyors and this identified many issues with a substantial spending requirement. The overall costs over five years were estimated to be in the region of £285,000 (including VAT) with over half covering the Church and the Priest’s House and the remainder for the Church Hall. It is suggested as a general rule that half of this funding of expenditure would come from the normal parish funds and the balance could from special funds.
It has been accepted by the Advisory Group that the first priority is to ensure the adequate maintenance of the Church and the Priest’s house according to the recommendations of the Quinquennial Review. This is not only a Diocesan requirement but it has also been strongly recommended by the Finance Committee that a contribution to these costs of approximately £70,000 over the next five years should come from the funds available from the sale of the St Alphege site. It is important and this should be supported by the Parish.
However substantial funds should remain. These are likely to be sufficient to support the second priority. This was identified as the replacement of the Parish Hall with a new building. It was felt that this building, dating from the early 1950’s, is not attractive and is situated badly, obscuring the view of the church from the Lower Road. Some of the facilities in the present building fall short of what is required, for example for catering, storage space a meeting room and Parish office space and these would be taken into account in the new building. The very high costs estimated at about £125,000 over the next five years for continuing maintenance of the Church Hall came out of the Quinquennial Review and this therefore also argues for its replacement. It is therefore proposed that a new building should replace it offering additional facilities and that this would be more suitably sited in the spinney to the west of the church. The removal of the Church Hall from its present site will also allow for an immediate increase in car parking spaces but this is a very sensitive issue which has to be negotiated with the planners.
Significant hurdles still need to be overcome if this development can go ahead. Obtaining planning permission is challenging since Our Lady of Sorrows is not only in the Green Belt area but also in the designated Effingham Conservation area in which new developments are severely restricted unless one can put forward very special circumstances (VSC’s) for the development which outweighs the harm to the Green Belt. This requires detailed pre planning negotiation with the Guildford planning office. Also the Diocese has to be assured that the planned spending is appropriate, feasible and has the approval of the Parish. The results of preliminary approaches to the planning authorities will be the subject of discussion at the meeting on the 10th April but have not been wholly discouraging.
The other issue in the long term is the goal of a possible extension to the Church .Whether there will be funds available for this projects is of course still uncertain. The Advisory Group felt however that it was opportune that, when consulting the Guildford planning authorities and the Diocese authorities that any possible future developments on the overall site should be looked at and taken into consideration. For this reason it was decided to test the reaction of the Guildford planning authorities now to a possible extension of the Church.
Minute of 10th April Meeting