On Monday, 9th January, Bury Parish Council agreed to return to our architects Victoria Holland Architecture to explore making some changes to our plans for the village hall.
These have emerged as a result of our public consultation process and concern two aims: –
1: Ensuring that the plans provide a larger and better village hall kitchen than the present facilities, and
2: Exploring the proposal that the first-floor area to the front of the village hall could become a self-contained, two-bedroom flat which could be added to Bury’s small stable of properties offered at affordable rents. This would be an alternative to the area being used as rentable office space under our initial proposals.
Neither of these changes would affect our core plan: to provide a new social hub at the heart of the village, a flexible space that would help us tackle social isolation in the village and would provide an ideal gathering place for socialising and smaller scale meetings such as book, bridge and parents’ clubs, as well as serving refreshments on a modest scale.
This new social space would have a counter area, behind which would be located our bigger and better kitchen.
Those plans have received overwhelming backing from within the community and we are pleased that our public consultation has given us the opportunity to refine our proposals.
We intend to hold two social events at the village hall to introduce the results of our new dialogue with the architects. We are aiming to stage these in late February and they will involve a weekday evening get-together, and another on a Saturday morning, both at the village hall. Both events will include displays showing the changes and will be attended by councillors so that interested residents can call in at their convenience and discuss the plans. Refreshments will be provided. The dates for these events will be finalised once discussions with the architects allow. A public meeting will follow at a later date to conclude the consultation process.
We are also pleased to announce that a working group has been formed to explore how best to design and kit out the new kitchen space. Chaired by Cllr Karen Davis, this group is also made up by four members of our community – two of whom are professional caterers – who we are sure will help us ensure our plans are the best they can be. We extend our sincere thanks to those who have agreed to give up their time to join the working group. We would like to think that community involvement such as this will be key if the project is to move forward successfully.
If you support the plan, in principle, for a social hub at the heart of our community, it is not too late to return the slip in the leaflet recently delivered to your home or to vote online. This remains important, as fundraising can only be successful if we can demonstrate strong community support for the project. Every vote counts and does not in any way mean you are pledging financial or active support.
If you have any thoughts or comments to make on the proposals or you did not receive a copy of the leaflet, please email clerk@buryparishcouncil.org.uk.
Here’s a PDF of the leaflet, and here are the full file of plans and elevations by Victoria Holland Architects, who were commissioned to do the work by Bury Parish Council.
