Village Halls & Community Buildings
Since 1951 CAN has offered advice for trustees of village halls.
Village halls, church halls and other community buildings remain a vital resource at the heart of many rural communities, acting as a hub for multiple local services and hosting community enterprises.
CAN believes a warm, comfortable and safe public meeting place is essential to community life and in rural areas. This role is provided by a wide range of voluntary-run community buildings including village halls, Women’s Institute halls, church halls, scout huts, recreational pavilions, day centres and community centres.
CAN's community buildings service
We offer a wide range of support, practical help and resources for trustees managing community buildings and village halls, including:
- Training for trustees and volunteers
- Hallmark quality standard scheme
- Support for the two village halls consortia
- Help making halls more energy efficient, through our NECL and CAIRN projects
- Promotion through initiatives like #villagehallsweek and our Heritage project
- Funding including our Community Spaces Partnership
Help and advice
We can offer support in a wide range of areas including:
- Trustees' roles and responsibilities
- Health and safety, insurance, risk assessments
- Charity registration, deeds, law, licensing
- Energy efficiency
- Policies and procedures
- Property maintenance, refurbishments and rebuilds
- Project development
- Fundraising
Our work with community buildings is strengthened by our links with ACRE and the national network of Rural Community Councils. This enables us to provide community buildings with high-quality information sheets and other resources, and to offer local buildings the chance to achieve a nationally recognised quality standard 'Hallmark'.
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Northumberland Village Halls portal
The Northumberland Village Halls portal gives information about all the village halls in Northumberland in one place and for the public to make bookings directly. The volunteers who run the halls also benefit, from having an easy to update online presence and shared promotion of the service.
Users can find halls through an interactive map of Northumberland or search by the facilities and services they provide. It is well used by people looking to hire a hall for things like weddings, parties, conferences, classes and even film production companies scouting for locations.
The not-for-profit portal was launched in 2021, organised by CAN with support from the West Northumberland Community Buildings Consortium and North Northumberland Village Halls Consortium, and funded by National Lottery Community Fund and to the Sir James Knott Trust.
Visit www.northumberlandvillagehalls.org.uk
Get in touch with our Village Hall Advisers
Tracey Morgan is our Village Halls Adviser - contact her by email traceymorgan@ca-north.org.uk
Jake Delacey is our Community Buildings Energy Adviser - contact him by email jakedelacey@ca-north.org.uk
Is your hall eligible for funding from Wind Farms?
Check this interactive map to see if your village hall is in a catchment area of a wind farm which offers funding for local projects. We worked with NICRE to create this, showing community buildings in Northumberland and catchment areas for wind farm funding (either by radius or parish area).
What Village Halls mean to you
At a Northumberland Village Halls celebration event CAN took the opportunity to ask a few people why their village hall is so important to their community. A short film has been created as a result - view the film.
