Major work on village hall upgrade

It is hoped the work at Edgmond Village Hall, near Newport, will encourage more community groups to use the venue and more parties to be held.

The project, which was last year backed by a £95,000 grant from Telford & Wrekin Council's Community Pride Fund, will see new toilets and a new room at the back of the building built.

The committee room, which is used for meetings by community groups in evenings, will also be refurbished and the kitchen spruced up.

Jeremy Bowman, chairman of the village hall committee, said the idea was to make the hall more welcoming and user friendly.

By doing this the committee hope it will encourage more people to use the hall.

He said: "The grant is terrific because it has enabled us to build an extension and solve the number of problems that we have with the existing hall. The key issue is that when we have more than one user using the hall at any one time they haven't got independent access to the facilities, such as the kitchen.

"So the extension will enable us to separate all of the rooms and have independent access to each of these facilities."

Mr Bowman said the work will make it easier for outside caterers as well as making more use of the field. The new room at the back of the building will open up on to the field.

He said: "The extension will be located at the back of the hall, with large doors at the side to the kitchen that will allow catering out into the field, if we need to do that when we have marquees.

"There will be a new room on the rear and that will also have doors that open out onto the field – this is great because it brings the field into the use of the hall. There will also be a further room behind the room facing the field, which will have some separating doors that can be opened out. So it will give us some really flexible space, and behind that there will be some new toilets as well.

"For the community it will be great because the rooms will be more comfortable.

"Particularly the committee room at the moment is quite cold when there are meetings in there late into the evening. It will improve comfort for the users and it will be more appropriate facilities. Our current kitchen is a little bit restricted and external caterers find it difficult to use, and the new kitchen will be much much more flexible."

He added: "This is a building and grounds for the use of the community. The scouts are a major user, we have karate groups and fitness groups and then the hall is available to the general public. It will be a great package of facilities that will really open up the use of the hall."