Village halls have been awarded for their good building management work.

Despite the challenges of hall closure and restrictions due to Covid, volunteer committees continued to work hard to improve their village hall charities, refurbishing their buildings and achieving national quality awards for governance.

The sun shone and spirits were high at Cumbria’s first in-person community buildings event in over two years, held recently at Newbiggin Village Hall, Penrith.

A Hallmark Award was presented to Scaleby Village Hall, as well as four others, including Arnside Educational Institute, Beaumont Parish Hall, Dalston Victory Hall and for Thursby Parish Hall. 

The Hallmark award acknowledges the good work undertaken by community building management committees across the country and aims to encourage improvement across all their work and activities.

In Cumbria, the quality standard scheme is run by community development charity ACT, as part of its community buildings advice service. 

ACT development officer and lead village hall advisor, Hellen Aitken, said of the event: “Since the first Covid lockdown we’ve been holding twice as many community buildings events, initially focussed on keeping up to date with changing regulations and reopening safely, but these have all been online, so it was lovely to be able to meet up with so many village hall volunteers again.”

“I was especially pleased to be able to present Hallmark Awards achieved during Covid and to hear from some of the halls we’ve supported with refurbishments and applying for National Lottery funding.”

“Sarah Bowman, funding officer for the National Lottery Community Fund, also joined us for the event and we’re delighted to be continuing our organisation’s partnership for a further three years, supporting more community assets to access funding and improve their facilities for the future.

“The Hallmark Award acts as a marker for grant funders, evidencing that a village hall is well run.

“I’d encourage all hall committees to visit our website and use the Hallmark checklist to see if their hall meets the standard.”

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