Charity Number: 301765
Bramley Village Hall: Bringing People Together
Bramley Village Hall Trustees: Annual Report for 2025-2026
Summary: Continued growth in footfall and new user groups kept pressure on the Trustees to ensure that the Village Hall was well maintained and a safe environment for users. A Fire Risk Assessment will lead to increased focus on enhancing fire safety and a new Fire Plan. Despite increased hirings, rates were raised to keep pace with costs. Roof repairs dominated the year with more to come as the Frith Room roof requires replacement. A new IT network provides faster and more secure connectivity for users. Some uncertainty persists around Barratt-Redrow’s intentions for the ground to the rear of the Hall, although their daily use of the Hall’s track to the site will likely end in the Spring.
Objectives
The objectives of the Village Hall and its Trustees, as set out in the Deed of Trust, remain unchanged. At the end of FY 2025-26 the Trustees Committee is as follows
Gareth Jones – Chairman
Raghavendra Vaishampayan – Treasurer
Jo Whatley – Secretary
Mike Hall – Maintenance
Jane Matthews – Health and Safety and the link with our Caretaker
Tony Walton
Mike Welch
Mark Lund
Peter Dziwior
Keith Oborn – Trustee nominated by the Parish Council.
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Two Trustees resigned during the year: Richard Beale and Jenny Begent. Both were long serving members of the Trustee Committee and Richard had been a highly effective Treasurer for the Hall since 2017. The Hall Trustees wish to place on record their great appreciation for Richard and Jenny’s engagement and support for the Hall over many years. Three new Trustees joined the Committee: Raghavendra Vaishampayan, Mark Lund and Peter Dziwior; all three are warmly welcomed. Raghavendra Vaishampayan has succeeded Richard Beale as Treasurer.
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Mrs Catriona Hayward continues to be employed as our Business and Events Coordinator. The Trustees are very grateful to Mrs Hayward for her continued efforts to support existing Hall users and in winning new business.
Mrs Caroline Keen continues as our Caretaker and we wish to place on record our appreciation for her continued commitment and support.
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Policy Documents
We have policy documents covering all of the key areas of the Hall’s functions, including finance, Health and Safety, bookings, maintenance and safeguarding; these were updated in March 2026. We commenced work on a new Fire Safety Plan and Policy. We have a Business Plan which is updated annually. All of these documents have been published on our website. A Strategy Document for the 5 Year period, 2025-2030 was published last year.
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Key developments: Issues and Challenges during the Year.
Martyn’s Law: An issue that the Trustees monitored closely over the past year was the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, frequently referred to as ‘Martyn’s Law’ after one of the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing. The Trustees remain confident that the Hall falls outside the parameters as set by the Act, viz, we are not ‘qualifying premises where it is reasonable to expect that between 200 and 799 individuals may be present at the same time from time to time’ (for more details see https://www.protectuk.police.uk/martyns-law/martyns-law-overview-and-what-you-need-know). We will continue to closely monitor developments in this area.
Hall Infrastructure: A dominant theme across the year was the need to undertake repairs to various parts of the Hall’s roof. Repair works by CTC Roofing resolved some of the most urgent issues identified in the roof surveyor’s report in March 2025. Old guttering was replaced and additional drainage was put in place to improve water egress from the roof of the main hall. While on site CTC Roofing identified additional problems with the flat roof over the Frith Room; a build up of condensation had caused the chipboard beneath the roofing felt to deteriorate and as a consequence the roofing was showing signs of sagging, although there was no evidence of water penetration. The architect for the extension identified the likely cause and we have put in place plans to replace the roof with a modern upgrade as soon as possible. In January 2026, CTC returned to the Hall after storm damage to the roof of the Bramley Room required replacement of several broken tiles.
Throughout the year, work was undertaken to deal with wear and tear issues arising from the volume of users alongside routine maintenance activity. Aside from small repairs and upgrades, these included dealing with an infestation by honey bees in the cavity wall of the main hall (they were safely removed), and cleaning of the overhead light baskets in the main hall. Gardening and external maintenance has continued to be delivered by a team of volunteers, saving us several hundred pounds in costs and their efforts are greatly appreciated by the Trustees. We have continued to pursue a more sustainable, greener, approach to managing our external spaces and we continue to benefit from the relationship we have established with Wilder Bramley, who provide us with helpful guidance, and they have facilitated replanting schemes in some parts of our perimeter.
Networks: We completed work to ensure that our networks across the Hall are compliant with Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) legislation; this work will enable us to sign off on a new policy for this area of our infrastructure. We installed new IT infrastructure across the building to improve Wi Fi access with enhanced security. This work was undertaken by Stevens IT Solutions and was supported by a grant from the Bramley Solar Community Benefit Fund, a charitable concern funded by Cero Generation, the company installing solar panels at the site on Minchens Lane.
Fire Safety: In February 2026, an independent assessor conducted a fire safety assessment of the Hall; the subsequent report showed that we need to undertake some additional work and enhancements to existing systems, and amend our working practices in some areas. One of our Trustees, Peter Dziwior, has agreed to act as our Compliance Officer and ensure that these recommendations are taken on board and acted upon. The development of a new Fire Plan will be a key deliverable from this work.
Redrow/Willow Park Development: We have maintained a close liaison with the Parish Council over the Redrow development, known as Willow Park, and have taken appropriate steps to ensure that the Village Hall boundaries are protected, and that the development work does not impact on the Hall’s viability, security or sustainability. Redrow advised us that the new entrance to Willow Park will be available in April 2026 and daily use of the track adjacent to the Hall will draw to a close. We are alive to the possibility of Redrow offering additional community facilities in close proximity to the Hall, although there is an absence of transparency around this issue at the time of writing. During the year, we engaged with the Borough Council and other interested parties in response to proposals from other developers to provide additional community facilities within the Parish.
Hall usage: The past year has continued to see an increase in footfall by both regular users and for one-off event hirings; approximately 650 people use the village hall on a weekly basis during term times. We continue to retain sufficient capacity and flexibility across our suite of rooms to meet the requirements of most hirers. Over the past year we have gained six new regular users, two of whom have taken advantage of our ‘Kick Start’ scheme (see below). We are pleased to report that, while we believed that the demise of the Country Music group might leave us with a significant gap in our bookings, they have been replaced. Due to popular demand, the hiring was taken over by a local couple who have reinvented it and ran their first event under the new name of Bootleg Country Music in February 2026.
Like many other community facilities, the Village Hall faces some serious challenges in ensuring it has sufficient income from hirings to meet its expenditure to keep our doors open. Over the past few years costs have increased and our hire charges last went up by 10% in October 2022 for party hirers and by 10% for our regular users in April 2023. But the Trustees determined that we could not continue to absorb these costs; an uplift in hiring charges of around 7% was necessary in early 2026. The new charges for party hires took effect on 1 January 2026 and for regular users charges went up on 1 April 2026. Our regular users were informed of the proposed changes at the end of October last year, giving them six month’s notice of a change in rates. We have taken soundings of other village halls in this part of Hampshire and we continue to assess that our rates remain competitive, especially with the regular user discount we can offer.
Financial situation
Our year-end figures have yet to be audited but income from hirings during 2025-26 amounted to £49,162 (compared to income from hirings for the previous year of £46,157 (audited figure)). These figures do not take into account grant payments for capital expenditure on some of the specific projects mentioned above.
Expenditure in 2025-26 was £45,768 (compared to £42,055 (audited figure) in the previous year). Both income and expenditure increased by around £3,000 each but cost savings from voluntary efforts to maintain the Hall and reduced utility charges following a review with our supplier have helped, alongside increased user rates as noted above. But wear and tear from higher user levels will increase pressure on our maintenance budget as the fabric of the main hall building continues to age (now over 50 years old).
In addition, we currently hold a reserve of £17,000, some of which may need to be committed in support of our maintenance projects during the year ahead.
The Year Ahead
A summary of our plans for the year ahead are set out in our Business Plan and the key points are:
to remain focussed on our running costs and continue to seek ways of reducing those costs;
engage with volunteers to achieve a rolling programme of minor repairs to deal with wear and tear issues;
develop plans to fund and deliver replacement of the Frith Room roof;
develop our Fire Risk assessment response and ensure that we deliver a new Plan by the end of 2026; and
continue to manage the green spaces around the Hall in a more sustainable manner.
Our ‘Kick Start’ scheme remains available to new groups considering using the Hall’s facilities for events and meetings; this is part of our strategy to encourage use of our facilities. We are willing to offer partners in the community the space to develop ideas, to experiment and trial events or new groups without worrying about room hire costs, while we accept a degree of risk in the loss of potential hiring income while a new group gets established.
The Trustees remain committed to supporting the Charity Commission’s desire to encourage people under the age of 25 to become more involved in the governance of charities, large and small. We remain keen to recruit at least one Young Trustee and seek additional volunteers to support the work of the Trustees and to eventually join the Committee.
Issues
There are no significant issues, complaints or disputes to report.
Gareth Jones
Chairman
Bramley Village Hall Trust
07471 897810
14 April 2026