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Welcome to Mey Village Hall March News Members of the committee recently visited Keiss hall to have a look around the new building. It was encouraging to see such a great facility and to get some good advice from a group who have completed a project similar to our own. Highlands and Islands Community Energy Company have awarded a grant of £26,900 towards the installation of our heat pump system. We’re really delighted with this funding and have a further application pending for assistance with our insulation costs. The heat pump will ensure our hall is always comfortably warm and will be much cheaper to run than any alternative system we could install. Below is a diagram showing the heat pump system but this is just an illustrative diagram and not a technical schematic.
Download the diagram here (pdf - 439kb). Building work continues on site with some of the steel work erected at the rear of the building. You can see some recent photographs in our gallery.
The equipment we had in the old hall was limited and in very poor condition. Over the coming months we will be fundraising to buy new chairs, tables, crockery etc. We held our AGM in January and currently have sixteen members on the committee. This is good news as the year ahead will be a busy one. Meetings take place on the last Wednesday of every month in Scarfskerry church hall. We’d be delighted to welcome new members so please come along if you’re interested. November 2007 Update The best news must surely be that work has finally started on site. Over the coming weeks things will begin to look very different as the old building is stripped back to its stone walls and the roof comes off completely. Our contractor GMR Henderson has started ground clearing and the new car parking area is taking shape. We will post photos in the gallery and keep you up to date. The ground source heat pump system is going to be a key part of the refurbishment. We have contacted other village hall committees who have one installed and they are making considerable savings on their heating costs and have a building that is constantly warm. We think this will be a very attractive feature in the new hall. At the moment we have secured £655,569 in funding. In addition to this we hope to receive grant aid on our heating system and are in the process of submitting an application to Highland and Islands Community Energy Company. We have been fundraising regularly this year and people have been genereous as always. Our fundraising link shows what we have been up to and we are already planning next year's events. Our meetings have been held in the Scarfskerry Church since the hall was closed in May. We will not be holding our regular monthly meeting in December as everyone is busy but in January we will begin again with our AGM. We are looking forward to 2008 which should be a very good year for our community.
February News
Just before Christmas four tenders were submitted for construction work on the new hall. They were all considerably above the estimate we had been working to and this put a big hole in our funding package. It also meant work could not begin on 1st February as predicted.
We had a shortfall of £189,000 to overcome and we set about achieving our target in two ways - by reducing the specification of the building and increasing the funding available. We have been able to make saving on the design of around £70,000 without compromising the facilities included in the hall. In addition to this we have been speaking to our main funders and are hopeful that they will increase their awards. The Queen Elizabeth Castle of Mey Trust has pledged a grant of £10,000 which is good news and we now seem to be back on track.
Our AGM will take place in the hall on Wednesday 21 February 2006 at 7.00pm. Our meetings have been very well attended during the past year and we hope the committee of seventeen members will continue to grow. We aim to establish a fundraising sub committee to increase fundraising locally so please come along if you'd like to get involved.
December News
On the 30 November our project was put out to tender. Five companies were invited to tender for the construction work and their prices will be returned to our architect before the Christmas holiday. We have also contacted three heating specialist to provide estimates for the installation of our underground heat pump system. We should know shortly what the actual cost of our project will be and hopefully it will be close to the estimate that we have been relying on. We are currently looking for storage space for some of our equipment that needs to be removed from the hall when construction work begins. We will have no further meetings now until 2007 which we hope will be a very good year for Mey Hall.
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