Once again, I am delighted to be reporting good news! By the time you are reading this, work should have begun on the planned refurbishment and alteration to the Village Hall. Our builder was delayed in starting, due to wet weather preventing the completion of some existing work.

There are two items of really good news. The first - an application was submitted to Yorkshire Forward for funding from the Community Intervention Chest towards the payment of £5,500 that we have to make to WREN to release the £50,000 they have awarded to us. (You may remember, we reported this requirement in the September newsletter). Very much to our surprise, because we were not at all optimistic that we would be successful when the application was made, we learned last week that they have awarded us £5000! We have already received the remaining £500 in donations, and, this week, a cheque in payment of the ‘release’ money was sent off, so the £50,000 is now secure! A great relief to us all.

The second bit of good news is that, at their recent meeting, the Parish Council agreed to donate £500 to the Village Hall Refurbishment Fund. This is very welcome and much appreciated. It has been made available from the payments for recycled waste paper and glass from the ‘skips’ on Burton Fleming road, so it is gratifying to see that ‘doing our bit for the environment’ is also making a beneficial contribution towards one of our own village facilities.

Our sincere thanks to the Parish Council.

Donations to the Refurbishment Fund continue to arrive, and to date total £2560, £500 of which has already been spent. Thank you to all the people who have helped towards this sum. We would still welcome further contributions to the fund because, as previously reported, significant reductions to the original grant application had to be made before the funders would consider it, and, at the moment, the finance we have secured does not include funds for items which are vital to the overall benefits essential to the scheme. For instance, we had selected new furniture which we are sure you will agree is desperately needed to improve both the appearance and comfort of the Hall, new equipment and fittings for the kitchen were planned, plus curtains for the windows. All these items and others, had to be removed. We hope they are only temporarily ‘on hold,’ and for this reason we are anxious to continue with fund raising, so that, if at all possible, we can include them in the finished job. Donations, however small, will all help us achieve our aim.

Our next fundraiser will be the cake stall on Driffield Market on Thursday 25^th November. Contributions to the stall will be very welcome. It will be nearing Christmas, so Christmas puddings, mincemeat etc. would no doubt be very popular, as well as the beautiful cakes and fancies you have so generously provided in the past. Please may we have them by, at the latest, Wednesday 24^th. They may be left at Dunmilkin, Eastgate, (Shirley Clark) or 26, Eastgate, (Barbara Moorfoot). If you would like to have them collected please ring to arrange, 420225, 420602, or 420338 or contact any committee member. We hope to have a small Tombola for which prizes would be much appreciated but please, because of space limitations, could you try to make them not too big in size.

Another Christmas Draw is also planned, so watch out for more details of that.