Community Buildings Advice: Ripley Village Hall

There has been a Village Hall at the heart of the pretty village of Ripley, Surrey since the 1970’s. Due to its deteriorating condition and the impact of COVID-19 restrictions, the previous hall was closed in March 2020 and subsequently demolished.

Planning permission for a new hall and a secondary building with associated, extensive parking was granted in February 2019 and phase one of the redevelopment was completed in 2022. Phase two is now complete and the official opening took place in June.

Suzie Powell-Cullingford, Trustee for Ripley Village Hall explains more about the work that’s taken place since 2019 to provide a new meeting spaces, parish office and affordable homes for the village, and how Surrey Community Action has provided support along the way:

“The trustees have worked very hard over the past six years to commence, design and bring this project to completion. We initially sought advice from Surrey Community Action and the Community Buildings Adviser which helped us to choose our architect, Brian Hendry. Brian has been a delight to work with and has ensured delivery of two fantastic new buildings which incorporate the Ripley Parish Council office, two residential flats for affordable rent to people with a link to Ripley, and our fantastic new village hall facilities.

Surrey Community Action also helped us to ensure that we were up to date with our requirements for all trustees and employees, with DBS checks and paperwork and trustee codes of conduct. This group of trustees were entirely new to the role and as such we were very grateful for the guidance given by Surrey Community Action to ensure we were acting in an entirely legitimate way.

Surrey Community Action was also really instrumental in advising us of the routes we should take with funding opportunities. We attended a number of workshops and events, all of which added to our knowledge which in turn allowed us to competently apply for funding.

In all we have raised £2.4million for this project through jigsaw funding of large scale sponsorship through to small donations from individuals within the local community. It has been an interesting journey of setbacks with planning, struggling to secure funding and various difficulties but we have never wavered from our goal of delivering a fantastic legacy building for our community for the next century. Ripley will shortly have a further 600 homes within the village and the new buildings will be essential for integrating new residents into the existing community. The village residents have been totally supportive of the project from the outset and are rightly proud of the new facilities and look forward to using them for many years to come.”

Find out more about Ripley Village Hall here and Surrey Community Action’s Community Buildings Advice service here.

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