Design and Planning Services for a Replacement or Refurbished Village Hall

Barrington Parish Council (BPC) wishes to replace or refurbish the village hall. The village hall and the land upon which it sits is held in Trust for the village by the Village Hall Trustee (VHT). The building is in poor condition and s106 funds have been allocated for its refurbishment or replacement. It is not a listed building but is a significant feature and located in a prominent position overlooking the Village Green and within the Conservation Area. It is accessed via a permitted accessway across the Village Green under licence from the Green Charity.

Following a detailed options study, BPC now wishes to drive forward with plans for the Village Hall and requires a company that can:

• Provide the necessary plans and documentation to support a planning application.
• Provide the necessary drawings and documentation to support tenders for construction works.
• Post-planning to provide building control plans (if required)
• Act as project manager for the construction project
• Act as the designated CDM

Refurbish

The principle of retaining an existing building wherever possible to avoid wasting carbon and resources points to refurbishment as the starting point for Stage 2 Concept Design. However, as the scheme is developed through Stage 2, the size of the original Hall, its proportion, construction and location on the site may limit flexibility in the emerging design and this needs to be considered.

The original Hall, with refurbished, insulated roof and new rooflights could sit at the heart of a highly insulated new building that could entirely envelop the old Hall, improving its environmental performance and creating welcoming and service space around it as well as extending its length with a secondary smaller hall to the rear. A Structural Report from the Structural Engineer Price & Myers indicates that the existing timber trusses in the Hall can be refurbished with tie rods at a higher level.

Rebuild

Alternatively, given the constraints of the Village Hall site, a new building is likely to be laid out with the two Halls at the heart of a building surrounded by circulation and service space. However, the freedom to change the proportion of the main Hall and its relationship to other parts of the building such as the smaller hall, may ultimately allow the design to be more flexible.

Accommodation Needs

The spatial requirements have been assessed following consultation with users. The total area was fixed at 650sqm in order to compare site layouts but including:

• Large hall: a flexible multi-purpose space.
• Small hall: a flexible multi-purpose space.
• Hospitality: a cafe space served by a kitchen and bar is a new space desired for the Village Hall, locating it at the front of the site enables it to double as a foyer zone for the arrival of large groups to attend performances. It also creates an active and welcoming front for the building, addressing the village green. The cafe area could function as the bar for events.
• Meeting Room: this is a new space for smaller meetings doubling as a room for curation or access to the Barrington History Society archive. The store for the archive should be accessible from the room or nearby. Some of the material could be on permanent display in the building.
• Community kitchen: if the Cafe is run commercially or has a double function as a bar with a license, it may be necessary to also have a small community kitchen that can be used by community groups including children, such as scouts. Duxford community centre is a precedent for this.
• SCDC Guidance on the use of s106 public funds is clear that no space should be for the exclusive use of any single group - thus for example a "sports and social club with bar" as a separate membership and entity would not be allowed.
• Early Years: however, Barrington does need pre-school `provision for children up to 5, particularly since the village is expanding with significant numbers of family housing. The size of the Early Years facility was fixed at 120sqm to reflect the level of funding contribution from SCDC, this is sufficient for a simple one room Early Years facility which should be an independent area of the building, with a clear security line between public and pre-school use and a direct entrance from the outside with drop off and pick up arrangements for buggies. This should enable delivery of the DfE's Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework and would be inspected by Ofsted. The classroom would ideally connect directly to its own outside play space and of course co-location with the village hall would bring potential customers to a Cafe.
• Access and Parking requirements will need to be confirmed, and a transport assessment undertaken to provide a baseline count of existing cars at different times of the day and week, to include.
• Parking and EV Charging
• Disabled parking
• Bicycle parking
• Refuse and recycling storage

Budget Constraints

The finite amount of funds available means that the work on the village hall needs to be completed within very strict budgetary constraints. For the provision of architectural, surveying, planning, design and project management services a maximum budget of £160,000 is available.

Contract Period

The Services tender request includes whole life project management. The intended contract start and end dates - from the design to handover and sign off of the whole project - are Start date 1.9.25 End date 31.8.27.