2020 has been a challenging year for our community and has brought illness and distress to many, as well as disruption to our way of life. Just as the pandemic started to kick in, the MUCH group was already planning events such as; coffee mornings in the Memorial Hall, a Disco, V.E. Day celebrations, further improvements and management of the old orchard on the Three Fields Site, as well as ways to find the balance to fund the building of The Hub. Unfortunately, due to the ‘lockdowns’ and ‘fire-breaks’ many of these plans were cancelled or curtailed.
Nevertheless, progress has been made on a number of fronts –
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The Orchard has been tidied, brambles cleared, trees pruned and labelled, – many thanks to Rob Graham (Willow Landscapes) and Beccy Williams from the Living Levels Project
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In June, we applied to The Big Lottery (People & Places) to try and secure extra funding needed for The Hub. The following month we heard that we had been successful in Stage 1 and to progress to Stage 2.
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During the year, the MUCH trustees were asked to also become the trustees of the Memorial hall as the previous trustees were retiring after many years of looking after this valuable community asset. We have taken the opportunity of lockdowns to make some improvements to the facility, including; the addition of WiFi, a post box, an ‘official’ postal address, a name sign on the road and, best of all, a new oak floor which is being laid very soon.
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Since June we have held a couple of Zoom meetings with MCC officers and our ‘Funding Officer’, Nathan, at the Big lottery. His job is to help us produce a successful Stage 2 application.
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In November we learnt that MCC had applied to Welsh Government’s Economic Stimulus Fund as another way of finding the ‘balance’ to build the hub. The initial response has been positive and MCC have therefore progressed further work to confirm the detailed design costs and an archaeology survey (needed as part of the planning conditions).
So, as we hope and look forward to a better 2021, we can perhaps also look forward to some real progress being made with the long-awaited Community Hub.
Happy New Year everyone!
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