Elm Community Hub Project – an update (and consolidation of previous news)

As you know, at the start of 2025 a volunteer group was formed under the PCC, to seek to further enhance the church by enabling a community hub to be developed within the rear of the building, that could be warm, welcoming and available to all to use as a much needed community space for the village, whilst ensuring the sacred purpose of the church itself would be maintained.

The past year has been a year of discovery, occasional disappointment and continued learning about the process(es) for applying for Lottery Funding, their unique requirements and the urgent priorities to maintain the church building, which is now on the Heritage At Risk Register.

It has become very clear that a community hub can only be developed and funding sought, once some of the most urgent repairs to the church are underway. The National Lottery, with whom we have engaged directly and whom have been most helpful, have guided us through their many different schemes, and we are now in a position to apply for a National Lottery Heritage Fund Grant (NLHF) to pay for prioritised repairs to the roof, gutters and improve surface drainage around the church, to make it more watertight. The NLHF also require improvements in the church’s web/digital presence and further use of the building by the community – of course the repairs will help enable that latter point.

An application has been developed over several months and is now (almost) ready for submission. The NHLF can judge these types of applications in around 2 months and we are very hopeful of a positive outcome – but this isn’t guaranteed, so fingers crossed. 

Some funding has already been secured, some still to be raised (by things like the well supported quiz nights and seasonal fairs – please do attend if you can) but the NLHF is still being asked for a grant of nearly £250k.

Assuming we are successful, we can then, with specialist input, seek appropriately qualified contractors to bid for and undertake the urgent repairs later this year. 

Further work on repairs will be certainly required but their cost is well above that which the chosen lottery scheme will support. However, those outstanding repairs will be included in the next phase of the community hub work, under different lottery fund schemes, that will, we hope, allow us to move forward with the overall aim of delivering a hub in the church.

Whilst much hard work remains, the imminent application is an important positive step change forward. 

We will continue to provide updates through this blog and the parish magazine as we know more.

Elm Community Hub Committee.