Presented at the Annual General Meeting on 13 February 2023

This is the report of the outgoing Chair and Vice-Chair who have, in practice, acted as co-Chairs for the last two years.  Several themes highlighted in the Annual reports for 2020 and 2021 set the scene for this last year.  Particularly that:

• there is a post-Covid dearth of potential sources and opportunities for large scale capital funding for projects such as The Mill Community Hub. 

• where possibilities do exist to apply for capital (e.g. the National Lottery) any grants awarded will be on a match-funded basis, with amounts granted likely to be limited to a maximum of £200k – £250k.

• the criteria for awarding capital grants for buildings, not surprisingly, now stress the use of sustainable materials that ensure a high degree of energy efficiency.  The Trustees, of course, welcome the emphasis on carbon reduction but recognise that, to quite a significant extent, we will have to re-visit the original designs and plans to optimise their carbon-reduction potential without making changes which would void the planning permission granted in 2018. 

The above points, together with the significant increase in costs of building materials and fuel, render several tenets of the Mill’s Business Plan, created over 4 years ago, out-of-date and in need of review.  Accordingly, the Mill Trustees view it as critical to the success of the Mill project that:

• the car park phase proceeds apace – there are multiple benefits to the community for achieving this element of the project plan.

• the Trustees of the Mill and of the existing Village Hall work together to develop the use of the existing venue towards it becoming, demonstrably, a well-supported and valued community facility.  Being able, eventually, to evidence that the community’s use of, and need for, the current hall has outstripped its capacity will make the best possible Business Case for securing support and funding for a new, better equipped, building in the medium term future.

So, a strange year but not without its positives and advances by any means.  We were delighted to welcome Leigh Morrell as a Trustee.  Leigh had been attending meetings for a while and has shown then, and since, a skillset and levels of energy and enthusiasm that will greatly benefit the project going forward.  This brought our complement up to the full strength of ten, as per our constitution.

We amended our constitution in July to incorporate such sensible improvements as requiring only one Trustee to be from each of the two Parish Councils (it was formerly two), and permitting up to two Trustees to be non-resident in either of the villages.

Since 31 March 2022, the Board has held five ordinary general meetings (27/04/22, 25/05/22, 29/06/22, 23/11/22, and 18/01/23). 

Joanne Leaning, our Treasurer-Trustee, has provided the Annual Finance Report for the year.  You will note that fundraising has brought in an income of £2,593.18. Tempting though it is to compare this unfavourably with the 2021 figure, the background contexts of 2021 and 2022 are so different as to make such comparison almost meaningless.  Factoring in the well-publicised economic pressures, it is fantastic that the organisers of the Wine Tasting and Wine Safari events have supported the Mill so well.  To all of you, and to all who contributed to the collections of coppers and Amazon Smile donations, a huge thank you.

Looking ahead, the Trustees are already stepping up plans to regain fundraising momentum, and will be organising some exciting fundraising schemes. Not least of these will be a Village Fete on Saturday 15 July, another Wine Tasting evening in March and two quizzes in April and October.  There is also talk of a Dog Show later in the year.  Keep a look out for updates on these and other fundraising events on the usual local communications platforms.

Meanwhile, plans to meld and merge efforts and responsibilities between the two Trustee Boards is progressing well. The Village Hall Management Committee has very similar aims and objectives to those of The Mill Project and shortly we anticipate that ownership of the Village Acre (the site for the car park and Mill building) will pass to the Mill Trustees Board. It is useful to remind ourselves here what these are.  Our registration with the Charities Commission (No. 1185835) states the Mill’s objects as:

“To further or benefit the residents of Cottingham and Middleton in Northamptonshire … to advance education and to provide facilities in the interests of social welfare for recreation and leisure time occupation with the objective of improving the conditions of life for the residents.  In furtherance of these objects… the trustees shall have power… To establish or secure the establishment of a community centre and to maintain or manage or co-operate with any statutory authority in the maintenance and management of such a centre for activities promoted by the charity in furtherance of the above objects.”

There has been considerable activity on progressing the construction of the car park phase of the Mill project.  We’ve had productive discussions with one of NNC’s senior planning officers and with a local architect about amending the existing tarmac-based plan to a much greener, eco-friendly solution.  The issues are complex.  We are looking to minimise the impact on the school’s boundary and Mill Road hedgerows whilst ensuring the safety of drivers and pedestrians.  The construction elements of the Mill’s work are led very ably by Simon Hempson-Medwell and Mike Curtis.  To date the quotes obtained for the various aspects of this work indicate that we will be able to afford it from existing resources.  Scheduling when we might make a start on the actual work is difficult at present because we need to submit fresh drawings to NNC and because we have to avoid disrupting nesting birds.  However, we aim to get this done by early 2024.

It just remains for us as outgoing Chairs, to pledge our continuing support to our successors in the coming year.

George West-Robinson and Sarah Brant
Co-Chairs of the Mill Community Hub, Cottingham and Middleton
13 February 2023

Happy New Year from all of us on the Mill Board of Trustees.

You may have noticed we have been very quiet over the past year, but we assure you we have been working hard in the background to define the short, medium, and longer-term objectives of The Mill Community Hub project.

We start by introducing some new members to the Board: Sian Coughlan of Middleton Parish Council and residents, Leigh Morrell, Peter Tyldesley, and Andrew Butcher. We say a huge thank you to our most recent departing board members Tony Freeman and Pete Bowman for their hard work and commitment over the years.

Post-pandemic we have seen a significant reduction in available funding pots to support the construction of new buildings. Typically, the small amount of funding that is available has tight “green” credentials within its criteria. This means that the current plans for the proposed new building would need significant tweaking and, potentially, re-submission for Planning Permission.  We recognise that these factors will cause significant delays to the long-term objective of building a new structure. So the Board has been thinking hard about what would be the next best move for our community.

At this time we feel that prioritising the enhancement of the existing Villages’ facilities is the right approach. In line with our constitution, it has given us the opportunity to re-evaluate where this Board of Trustees can add value at this time to our community.

Our medium-term goal, therefore, is to support our friends on the Village Hall Management Committee (VHMC) to ensure we have a future-proof solution to the sustainability and profitability of our current community facility.

However, we are planning to build the car park element of the Mill project in the fairly near future.  This will be in the field beyond the school towards Bringhurst.  This will have multiple benefits such as providing parking at school drop-off and pick-up times, parking for events and meetings at the Village Hall Annex, and enabling greater use of the recreational field for sports.

For us to achieve any of our medium/long-term objectives we need to begin with some smaller initiatives.

In February we will be launching our calendar of fundraising events for 2023, we really want to gain as much village engagement and support to regain the momentum we had pre-pandemic. If you have any ideas or events, you would love to attend please drop us an email at leigh_hoppet@yahoo.co.uk.

We have created a comprehensive communications plan to ensure that we are keeping you all up to date with news, progress, and exciting changes throughout the year make sure you follow us on Facebook.

Until next month,

The Mill Board.

From Acting Joint Chairs George West-Robinson and Sarah Brant

Firstly, thank you to everyone who has continued to get behind, donate to and talk about The Mill.

Our third pop-up attic sale raised almost £450. Thank you to both churches for the loan of tables, to all the contributors, and to the volunteers who turned out on the day to sell, buy, deliver and provide welcome refreshments when the weather chilled.

We are very excited to have been able to appoint additional Charity Trustees, each of whom brings particular experience, skills and interests to help drive the project forward.

Looking ahead, we plan to start constructing the splay and entrance to The Mill site as soon as weather permits in the New Year.

Our Spanish Wine Tasting event on 27 November is now sold out, and we’re holding a Christmas Craft Sale in the room above the shop from 29 November to 3 December.

Other plans for fundraising and early construction tasks are in the pipeline. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any great ideas, feedback or offers of help. We’ll continue to keep you posted.

The Mill Community Hub will be holding its Annual General Meeting (AGM) online by Zoom on Monday 29 March at 7pm. If you’d like to join the meeting virtually, please contact Chair of Trustees Pete Bowman by noon on Friday 26 March, and he’ll send you a Zoom invite and a copy of the agenda.

There will be a brief opportunity for questions to the Trustees at the end of the AGM (around 10-15 minutes or so), so please indicate in your email whether you’d like to speak. If you already have an idea of any questions you’d like to ask, please feel free to send them in advance, so they can be answered fully.

The main AGM usually lasts about 15-20 minutes (not including Q&A) and will be followed by the March Ordinary General Meeting, which you are also welcome to stay for. OGMs generally last between 30 minutes and an hour.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to Gerry Henson who has been selling plants through the village shop and from home, raising a tremendous £200 for The Mill. Gerry had been growing plants for this year’s Fete which, as you know, has had to be postponed, but undaunted Gerry decided to press on and sell them herself instead. Thanks to Gerry and to everyone who bought one of these lovely plants.

Meanwhile, we’re still working behind the scenes to keep The Mill project moving forward. The Archaeological Survey has been completed and, while they’re now finalising the official report, we understand they found no issues with the site.

We have also appointed Corby Borough Council as our Building Control Services consultants, who will provide services such as serving legal notices, undertaking statutory consultations, ensuring compliance and issuing the final building regulations certificate when the project is completed.

Thanks again for all your continued support for the project and keep safe.

Pete Bowman,
Chair, The Mill Community Hub

I thought I’d just share a quick update to reassure you all that we’re still busily but safely working behind the scenes on The Mill project during the current lockdown.

Within the last few weeks, we’ve appointed a Project Manager – GSS Architecture in Kettering, the architects that have been with the project since the start – and they’ll be helping us move towards our first phase of construction, which is to make a start on the entrance works in order to satisfy the terms of the planning permission. These works had been planned for August but will almost certainly now be put back, although we had originally built in a few months’ leeway anyway to offset any potential problems.

Before any works can start, the planning permission requires us to carry out an Archaeological Survey. We’ve now had three quotes for the work and we’ll be appointing our preferred surveyor shortly. As with the Project Manager, any work that needs to be carried out on site will be delayed until the lockdown is eased. While there will be some work that can be undertaken from home, our consultants’ personal safety and wellbeing is extremely important to us.

As you’d expect, the situation has also had an effect on our fundraising programme. Our Fundraising Team has thought long and hard about which events in the programme could still go ahead and which ones we’ll have to postpone. Please be assured that all your good work on planned events like the Copper Mile and the Food and Drink Fair won’t go to waste, there’ll just be put on hold for the time being. And as far as this year’s Fete is concerned, we’ve got our fingers crossed that it will still go ahead, but later in the year than planned.

In the meantime, Del Robertson is aiming to put together another Community Cookbook for Christmas so if you’ve got any more of your own recipe ideas knocking about, why not email them over to Del at delboy639@gmail.com?

The Fundraising Team has also been busy liaising with funding and awards bodies, particularly the National Lottery where we have three applications in progress. Understandably, funding agencies are rightly focusing their efforts on organisations that are dealing directly with the Covid-19 situation at the moment, so any non related applications are being put on hold for the next six months. We have been advised, however, that our own applications are still in line for consideration, but obviously not until the current situation has eased.

Recently, we applied to HMRC for official recognition as a charity for tax purposes. We’ve now got that recognition and that means we can press ahead to set up Gift Aid and Just Giving schemes for people who’d like to donate to the project directly. I’ll update you further when these schemes are live.

We’re still working in the background to make sure that the Mill project is moving forward, even though it’s a little bit more difficult under the current circumstances. The project has sufficient funds to meet the costs of the works and services necessary to comply with the terms of our planning permission, and we have the expertise, enthusiasm and commitment to make sure this project happens.

Finally, I’d like to thank you all again for the wonderful support you’ve given the project – it genuinely means a lot to the trustees, the ‘Millers’ and everyone else who’s given their time freely.

Keep safe,

Pete

Planning will soon be starting for the Cottingham and Middleton Village Fete, which we expect to take place in early July.

Last year’s fete raised an amazing £6,200 for The Mill, and the organisers are now looking for volunteers who’d be able to get involved in organising and running the fete, to make this year’s event just as successful.

If you’re interested, please send your name and contact details to Sarah Brant on sarah.e.brant@sky.com as soon as possible, so she can set up a meeting and get the ball rolling.

Thanks to those who came along to the recent AGM for The Mill. At the meeting, Pete Bowman was re-elected as Chair, Tony Freeman as Vice Chair and Jo Leaning as Treasurer.

Here’s the full text of the Chair’s Annual Report for 2019.

With planning permission now secured, 2019 saw the start of our comprehensive fundraising strategy with a number of hugely successful events taking place over the course of the year.

The starting point for this strategy was our first Fundraising Workshop held at the beginning of March. At a very well attended event, we welcomed people from both villages who had a wide range of skills and expertise to bring to the project, with teams volunteering to organise and run a range of events throughout the year. Alongside this activity, our core fundraising team – Jan and Del Robertson – were busy identifying and pursuing leads from a variety of local, regional and national organisations and businesses. This work has been crucial to bringing the project to the eyes and ears of important potential funders, and we would like to offer our sincere thanks for their ongoing efforts and hard work.

Following the first Workshop, we rebranded the project as ‘The Mill Community Hub’, complete with a new logo created by local designer, Charles Freestone of Wow Design. This would now appear on all subsequent publicity for the project. It also gave rise to the term ‘Millers’, which we use to describe our growing band of enthusiastic volunteers.

One of the first major events we were involved with was the Village Fete, held in July and organised and run by an incredible team of people headed up by Sarah Brant. Despite the undecided weather, there was a superb turnout and the event raised a staggering £6,200 for The Mill project.

As we entered this new stage in the life of the project, it became clear that we needed to change the status of the existing Trust. This was primarily to allow us to employ people, issue contracts in the Trust’s name and secure limited liability for the Trustees. The way forward was to become a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), which would allow us to do all of these things and more. The move to a CIO was agreed at a public meeting held in August, after which we started the official process of changing over. We were officially granted CIO status in October.

Throughout the year, we have also been consulting with building industry professionals to fine tune initial costings we had obtained for the construction of The Mill, which will now be on a ‘design and build’ basis. This is an ongoing process and we would like to thank all the local and national businesses that have already given us valuable advice and support to help move the project forward. As it stands, we are looking to start initial groundworks by August 2020 as the first phase of the construction programme.

In the meantime, increasing numbers of villagers were continuing to get involved through two more Workshops – the most recent being held in September where a calendar of events for the rest of the year and throughout 2020 was devised. The Mill’s bank balance was further swelled by Del Robertson’s Chilli Bake Off and Seasonal Cookbook, the Christmas card and the Christmas Bazaar, which alone raised over £2,000 for the project.

We are constantly amazed (and humbled) by the amount of effort that people who have got involved with all of these events put into raising money for the project. The ‘thank you’ list would take quite a while to read out, but be assured you have our heartfelt appreciation for all the work you put in behind the scenes.

As far as our finances go, the project’s own cash funds amounted to £13,782.82 (as of 31 December 2019), with £35,990.50 held by Middleton Parish Council (as of 31 December 2019), which is specifically ring fenced for the new community hub.

Finally, I think it’s fair to say that the Trustees have – as always – put in an incredible amount of time and effort to keep this project live and very much do-able. There’s still quite a way to go but, as this past year has shown, we’re getting there.

Pete Bowman
Chair of Trustees, The Mill Community Hub, Cottingham and Middleton