A pretty wet end to the week cut work a little short for the heavy machinery this week, but not before Dunbar Plant had finished cutting out the full foundations footprint of the hall. We can now see clearly where all the rooms in the building will be! TRF will be back next week to dig trenches for the various services coming into the building, and to start shuttering and laying the metal reinforcements, ready for concrete to be poured into the foundations. Conduits, rebar, and timber already arriving on site for those jobs!
New Village Hall
Hall Build – Week 04
An exciting week, as our funders of the hall, CWP Energy, came to check out our progress! Ray and Eldon were pleased to be able to come and see in person what a real difference their community benefit funds are making to us.
TRF and Dunbar Plant have had a tough few days, battling rain and frozen ground, which has meant a bit of catch up work was required on Saturdays but we are back on schedule. The builder’s welfare huts are now plumbed in and just waiting on power.
The end of this week saw yellow spray paint mark out the final footprint of the hall and foundation trenches going in!
Hall Build – Week 03
It’s been a muddy week of site prep, while hoping that the snow holds off, which thankfully, it pretty much did! TRF now have their bright yellow, on-site accommodation for the next year or so in place and just waiting on power and plumbing. The site is being roughly marked out for the location of the new hall and pipes are being delivered to be buried in the early stages of the works, that will eventually hold our power and internet cables, as well as heating pipes from our ground source heat pump!
Hall Build – Week 02
Full demolition was completed this week. She was gone in the space of only a few hours! All waste material has been expertly removed by Dunbar Plant, and we now have a clean, flat space to start building in the new year! The playground is inaccessible at the moment, but will be opened up as much as work allows.
Hall Build – Week 01
Demolition of the old hall has begun! The Ridge have done their “soft strip” this week, meaning that everything that is to kept for reuse has been carefully removed, including the floor!
New hall talk from The Ridge Foundations
As part of our farewell party for the old village hall, Gordon, from the The Ridge Foundations, came to chat to us about their approach to taking on the build of the new hall.
Tender replies received!
We have now received all six tender responses from the contractors we submitted to. CSY have managed to make a summary table of the responses, showing the quote breakdowns “like-for-like”.
We have been in touch with our primary funders, Community Wind Power, as clearly, their view on choice of contractor and total cost is critical. Unfortunately, the contractor that built Abbey St Bathans’ hall, who were already well known to CWP, declined to submit tender for the project. However, we have plenty of other local contractors that come with recommendations from our architects and other sources!
The next stage then, is to decide on a first-choice contractor with input from CWP. We will then work with the chosen contractor to refine their quote to be as close as possible to exactly what we want for the final build.
A specialist asbestos handling company is booked to survey the existing hall at the end of this week. Getting this survey done now will speed the demolition along, no matter which contractor we go with in the end. If any asbestos is found, it will be safely removed by specialists.
Village hall plans out to tender
CSY have gone to tender with 5 contractors
Five contractors, who expressed an interest in tendering for the demolition and construction of the new VH, have been sent a comprehensive tender document by our architects CSY.
All five are local to East Lothian and the Borders area.
OCA committee have already started holding site meetings with the contractors to ensure that they have all the additional information they need to produce their costed proposals.
Village Hall Planning Submitted!
After a lot of time and effort spent, OCA are very happy to announce that the village hall Planning Application has been revamped and resubmitted!
You may already be aware that OCA took the disappointing decision to withdraw our previous Planning Application after some points were raised by East Lothian Council, which needed addressing in detail before our application was likely to proceed. We went back to the drawing boards with CSY, our architects, and went through a formal “pre-Planning Application” with ELC. This gave us a chance to get as clear an idea as possible of what ELC would like to see in a revised plan for our village hall.
Lots of iterations and a Local Place Plan later, and we now have our modified design committed to (electronic) paper. The changes are minor, in that the form and function of the design we all voted on is essentially unchanged. The hall now sits just over a metre further back behind the village green wall; and improved car parking, including an accessible parking space and footpath to the hall, are now formalised in the plans.
You can read the whole (now much more extensive!) document set here. The ELC Planning Application numbers are 24/00747/P and 24/00748/CAC for the new hall build and old hall demolition, respectively.
Village Hall – Pre Planning Submitted
Our Pre Planning Application for the new hall has now been submitted to East Lothian Council. As per the advice from our architects, we recently withdrew the original Planning Application, in order to give ourselves time to resolve some of the issues that were raised by ELC. The two main points were the provision of sufficient parking, and amount of the existing stone wall that was proposed to be taken down (even though the material was to be reused).
OCA would like to be clear that although this Pre Planning Application is an official process with ELC, the general purpose of such applications is to facilitate a detailed conversion with the council, allowing applicants to get some feedback on what is likely to be accepted or not, but without any final commitment to the submitted drawings. As such, the plans we are sharing here (although identical to our original submission in most details!) do not officially represent definite design choices at this point.
Despite this, we wanted to share the submission with the community, as it does represent a big positive step forward!
The documents that CSY have drawn up for this are considerably more extensive than the last submission. You can download and read the entire pack here. The major changes are those pictured in this post: the addition of a parking area and potential EV charging points near the church, and the reconstruction of a larger length of stone wall to the west of the new hall – (K) in the image below, and also (J), where the stone is now used in the construction of the front steps. Much more has also been included on the heritage and conservation status of the village, which will be important in ensuring parking solutions are sympathetic to the green and the village.
The next steps are to wait for written feedback from ELC and to organise a site meeting with a council representative. Both are expected in January. CSY feel sure that this will help us overcome any remaining issues and get us back to a full Planning Application.
As always, questions or comments are welcome. Please email info@oldhamstocks.org.uk.