Electrical progress made

Earlier today I met with an electrician to suvey the hall electrics (he is trusted and known from some years back) with a view to getting a quote for the hall electrics rewire. We are keeping the electrics very simple to reduce costs. I have said we will labour for the electrician, so that costs can be reduced. I sent him a sketch of what is needed and he will provide a written quote. The intention is to move ahead on this regardless of the funding position with the village trust or Parish Council.

Having agreed with the club where the supply should enter the hall (they rightly didn't want an external meter or obstructions as pedestrians enter the club), I have now ordered the new electrical supply. This should take 4 to 6 weeks. The new supply will enter the hall on the left hand side of the stage, on the back wall.

An overhead electrical wire will feed into the hall. This is good value at just over £232 for the supply to be put in. This contrasts with daylight robbery from the gas supplier. They want over £3600 to put a supply in place and lay 17 metres of plastic gas pipe. I spoke with the gas people earlier today, they cant blow a new 'inner' pipe down the old supply and even if we dug the trench ourselves the saving would only be a few hundred pounds. Its looking like we will need to revert to plan A and use oil...

This project continues to have significant momentum and we will not be held back by local politics or inertia of others. We can expect a village meeting to be called and members and supporters of the group need to be ready to do two things:

• Support the group when we engage with the village trust and Parish Council
• Be ready to raise funds if we do not attract financial support from Trust or PC

We will open up the hall for use, if that is without heating - so be it, we can manage and work that out later. My next foray is with the land registry (we have three months to register the lease) and to buy fire extinguishers and blankets.