Here is a brief update from the Village Hall Committee on some recent improvements we’ve made to the hall, along with information about some of the upcoming events.

We recently carried out some improvements to the hall to make it an even better venue for village events and easier for local residents to access:

• Redecorated the main hall, entrance space, corridor and kitchen. We think it looks great and hope you will agree! We will be posting some images soon! This was paid for mainly from hall funds but we also received a grant of £1,000 from the East Lothian Council Civic Pride Fund for which we are very grateful.
• Replaced all the lighting in the main hall with new LED lighting which looks great and really sets off the newly decorated hall – while also helping reduce our energy costs. We also improved some of the security lighting on the approach to the hall. Many thanks to Garvald and Morham Community Council who gave us a grant to cover the cost of this – much appreciated once again!
• Installed a dishwasher in the kitchen which we hope will prove very useful for large village events as well as weddings, parties, etc.
• Installed a user-friendly timer for our heating system that can be controlled remotely.
• Installed a key safe to help improve access for residents – we are looking at other ways of making it easier for local people to use the hall on a less formal basis and will provide a future update.

In addition, last year we installed a new sound system and replaced (or improved) many of the windows in the hall.

We think the hall is now a much improved asset for the Garvald Community and we are keen to see it used as much as possible.

To this end we are also looking to simplify our charging structure and booking processes to make it easier and less expensive for residents to use the hall. We have already agreed that Village events that are open for all villagers can make use of the hall for free – e.g. the Children’s Christmas party, Village Christmas dinner, Hogmanay Ceilidh, etc. Further updates on our revised pricing structure and booking process will be posted soon – watch this space.

In order to help us maintain and improve the hall for community use our main source of income comes from hire charges, particularly wedding bookings. We currently try to limit the number of weddings to around 6 per year to avoid inconvenience to the village and minimise time demands on the committee. We also try and achieve a good spread of the weddings over the main wedding season – usually April to October. However this year – despite our best efforts – we have 3 weddings in May on consecutive weekends. We hope villagers will not be too inconvenienced and will try to ensure a better spread next year. The upside is that the rest of the summer will be less busy than usual.

The actual dates for the weddings are:

Saturday 5 May – setting up on 4 May and clearing up 6 May
Saturday 12 May – setting up on 11 May
Saturday 19 May – setting up on 18 May and clearing up 20 May
Saturday 21 July – setting up on 20 July and clearing up 22 July
Saturday 1 September – setting up on 31 August and clearing up 2 September
Saturday 8 September – setting up on 7 September and clearing up 9 September

General enquiries:
We hope you find this update useful. If you have any comments or questions do contact us.
Chairperson – Jim Pattison – 830662, or email via the Village Hall General Enquiries form.

Hall bookings:
Viki Freeland is the current bookings manager. You can contact her via the Garvald Village Hall Bookings form.