Project Update April 2023

This week has been another roller coaster ride for our team as we continue to work on our Rock Hall project (which our Charity Banana Enterprise Network started in January 2020).

The week started with our Charity’s Trustees being required to agree to something which they didn’t expect to have to do, but to ensure our £4million Rock Hall funding bid application is as strong as it could be this year, they have agreed to it. We will talk more about that in a future update. We want the National Lottery Heritage Fund to say yes this year! It’s the moment our team and loyal supporters have dreamed off over the past 3 years and we really hope that decisions that are being made now, to meet the requirements of the Council and funders, will prove to be the right ones in the end.

We have had some new followers in recent months so we thought it was time to give a short recap of how our project started and what we have achieved in the last 3 years. The Hall (currently owned by Bolton Council) had been up for lease for around 2 years when we enquired about it in January 2020. The agents told us it would be put up for sale later that year if no suitable applicants were found with the money available to renovate the Grade 2 listed Hall. In 2018, those costs of renovating the Hall, were assessed at £434,881 – now in 2023, due to increasing materials costs and inflation, this would cost at least £600,000.

The problem though, is that the Hall is not very big inside and has very limited use, so commercially, it would not be viable. Our original project viability study looked at various options including extending the Hall. These have since been looked at again by Birmingham University who very kindly used us as a case study for a team of mature student architects and planners etc. Our Charity made a decision that the only way forward for the Hall would be to restore it back to almost its original size by adding a new extension, creating more usable space.

In 2020, our Charity submitted a legal document asking the council to recognise the Hall as an Asset of Community Value (to prevent any potential sale of the Hall), but it was rejected on the basis that the Hall had not been used by the community since 2014. However, thanks to two local Councillors (Paul Sanders and Maureen Flitcroft) championing our community led project, in August 2020, we were invited to have a meeting with the Leader of the Council (David Greenhalgh – who sadly died in July 2021) and discussed our proposals for the Hall. The Leader agreed to give us the time needed to make further progress on the project and the Hall was not put up for sale. Since then we have continued to make positive progress, managing to overcome various barriers.

Projects like these take a lot of time and money! Our Charity has spent over £45,000 of our own reserve funding so far on our Rock Hall project, such is our determination to succeed and create something special in Moses Gate Country Park in Farnworth. Thankfully our Charity was successful in securing £99,600 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund in 2021 to further develop our proposals and deliver free community heritage based activities including an Archaeological dig. It helped us to produce more documents needed to show potential funders that our proposals for saving Rock Hall, would be viable and that the building would become self-sustainable, enabling future generations to enjoy it! Our Charity hopes that in future, once the Hall is restored, that it would generate enough profit enabling us to have a foundation fund, which will support local groups and people in need.

2022 – Our team worked very hard on producing a £4million funding bid application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund but in September we received the news that we had been sadly unsuccessful. The Lottery strongly urged us to reapply though and were very impressed with the work we had completed and the journey we had been on. However, they needed more clarity of how we were working in partnership with Bolton Council. Since then we have been working closely with Council Officers and we are aiming to reapply in May.

In December 2022 we received the fantastic news that our Charity (Banana Enterprise Network) had written a successful funding application to the Government for their Community Ownership Fund and had been awarded £295,000. It was just what we needed to hear after September’s disappointment. There are only two people in our Charity who write these bids and they are not professionally trained bid writers, so it’s been a huge personal achievement for them.

2023 – Here we are again, working in partnership with the Council and preparing to re-apply for the £4million project to restore Rock Hall and build a new extension at the rear (taking the Hall back to almost its original size before it was partially demolished in 1981). Fingers crossed for a “yes” from the National Lottery Heritage Fund in September! We will update you again as soon as we have any more news.

Thanks for your continued support!