The Village Halls Podcast
A podcast for anyone involved in the running of Britain's 10,000 village, church and community and anyone interested in the vital community services they provide.
The Village Halls Podcast
Stronger Together: The Village Hall Consortium Making Waves
The North Northumberland Village Halls Consortium demonstrates how 80 village halls work together to share knowledge, resources, and support across their rural communities. Their volunteer-led network provides crucial services like affordable PAT testing and trusted contractor recommendations, creating a sustainable model for village hall collaboration that has thrived for over 20 years.
• Nearly 80 village halls in North Northumberland working as a self-help group for over 20 years
• Consortium recently received funding through the Benefact Group's "Closer to You" initiative
• Members collectively manage approximately £22 million worth of property assets
• Shared contractor database helps halls find reliable service providers
• Volunteer-run PAT testing service keeps costs affordable (about £15 for small halls)
Hi, Marc Smith and welcome to the Village Halls podcast sponsored by Allied Westminster, the UK's largest specialist provider of village hall insurance and the home of Village Guard. Before we begin, a quick reminder that entries are now open for the Village Halls Inspiration Awards 2025, celebrating the incredible work happening in village community and church halls across the country. You can apply between the 1st of May and the 30th of September, so do consider putting your hall forward. In this episode, we're talking about the North Northumberland Village Halls Consortium, which Gavin Mitchell from Ally Westminster nominated for a grant from the Benefact Group. We had a fantastic conversation about how nearly 80 village halls in Northumberland are working together, the challenges they face and the creative ways they're supporting one another and their wider communities. It's a really inspiring story and I'm excited to share it with you now. So welcome to our podcast.
Marc Smith:Today we have three wonderful returning guests, so by this point they will be seasoned pros. Firstly, we have three wonderful returning guests, so by this point they will be seasoned pros. Firstly, we have Chris Withers, schemes and Partnership Director for Ecclesiastical part of the Benefact Group. Welcome to the podcast.
Chris Withers:Thank you, Marc.
Marc Smith:Next we have Gavin Mitchell, who you may already know as the MD of Allied Westminster. Welcome back to the podcast, gavin. Hello Marc, again, nice to be back. And we have George Curtis, who is representing the North Northumberland Village Halls Consortium. George, welcome to the podcast once again. Thank you very much, Marc. Now, obviously you have been on the podcast before back in 2021, but it would be great if you could briefly tell us a little bit about the consortium and the role that plays within your wider community.
George Courtice:Sure, we were set up about 20 years ago and it's really best described as a self-help group of village halls. It now numbers nearly 80 village halls and community buildings, I might add, in the north of Northumberland and, unlike many, most counties, we've actually got two consortia within Northumberland one in the west and we're in the north, and the north now, as I mentioned, numbers over 80. And, like the overwhelming number of our members, halls, halls, it's entirely the consortium, that is, it's entirely run by volunteers.
Marc Smith:That's fantastic, so I will. For anyone new listeners here, I will put a link to the previous podcast on the website. So, gavin, it was yourself that put the nomination forward to the Closer to you funding initiative. So what was it about yourself that put the nomination forward to the Closer to you funding initiative? So what was it about them that made you so determined to fight for their inclusion?
Gavin Mitchell:I think because we have known I mean, I've known George for many years now. We've met a few times and I know the great work that the consortia do and, as George says, it's around 80 halls and I think it's basically a collective of about 20, 22 million pounds worth of property assets, something of that order. And I think what, what really appealed to us is essentially that the network works on the basis of sharing insights and provides information and support and guidance in terms of energy governance, fundraising and so on and so forth. And village halls. That's so important for village halls to be able to have that support, have that backup, have that guidance, because village halls every penny counts for village halls right across the country. They all share the same problems and the great thing about the consortia is that they essentially run like a thread through all the needles of the village halls, keeping, as far as we can see, things together and in good order, and I think it's commendable work that they do.
Marc Smith:Absolutely yeah. So, chris, the Closer to you funding initiative can you explain what that is and how do other village halls put themselves forward?
Chris Withers:Yeah, sure. So Ecclesiastical is probably part of the Benefact group and all of our available profits are given back to communities, so any of your listeners can go online and search for Movement for Good throughout the course of the year, and Ecclesiastical and Benefact will be giving away £1,000 grants throughout the course of the year. And Ecclesiastical and Benefact will be given away £1,000 grants throughout the course of the year, and there's also four special draws in the year for larger amounts too. So that's available throughout the year to anyone. But in addition, ecclesiastical identifies a number of our key, most important brokers who we provide a closer to you grant to, in which those brokers then nominate a charity that is important to them, and and it was through that that Gavin nominated George- what was it that convinced you about the North Northumberland Village Halls Consortium case to award the funding?
Chris Withers:The easy answer to that is Gavin. He put a very robust case to us in terms of that and really it is all about the broker. Deciding which charity or firm is is um important to them and their business and with what I've just heard there from from george, I can exactly see why. Why gavin?
Marc Smith:chose him. Yeah, and I will put a link to the podcast that we did before, chris, about the the funding, but it would be good to remind people how do you nominate village halls for this type of funding?
Chris Withers:yeah, so, um, anybody can nominate themselves. So anybody that's listening now can can nominate their village hall as a recipient. And then what we would encourage you to do is to increase the number of nominations, because the more nominations that come through, the greater your chance of success. So, on the same website where you would nominate, you would find resources on there where you can produce a poster.
Chris Withers:So the village hall could print off a poster, put it into their building and encourage attendees to the hall to also nominate. So yeah, movement for Good. If you search that into Google, any of the various search engines, you will find us.
Marc Smith:Excellent, and I will add a link into the show notes as well. So, george, what was the reaction to receiving the funding notes there as well? So, George what was the reaction to receiving the funding?
George Courtice:Well, to be honest, initially I took one look at the initial proposal and said this is clearly a scam. We never traditionally solicit money from outside organizations, mainly because we don't want to compete directly with our members for the same funding pots, and so we've been very proud to be independent and independent. Our income is sufficient for our needs, and if it's not, then we cut our cloth. So when we got this we thought what? And there was no direct link into allied westminster, so we didn't know who proposed this and everything.
George Courtice:But after a couple of hours of searching around I was delighted to to be able to confirm to my colleagues that this wasn't a scam.
George Courtice:But I did send it off to everyone the committee, that is, the small committee we have to run the consortium and they all agreed with me that it had all the makings of the scam on it, particularly as it only wanted our account details, and that was a real giveaway to us suspicious folk. But so we were absolutely delighted when we realised that it was entirely legit, and we're still in the throes of working out given that this was such a surprise working out how best to spend the money, and we're talking to our members as well. But I suspect there'll be two main areas where we'll spend it um, and one is in relation to improved training, which is getting quite costly. Uh, we're very keen to do it face to face rather than online, because we want it to be very specific to the needs of village halls and the online stuff tends to be much more generic, and or improve our web presence, because undoubtedly, our website is the main source of information for most of our members, together with regular emails through MailChimp from us.
Gavin Mitchell:yes, yeah, I think it's. If you don't mind me saying, Marc, I think it's not typical of all of our communications. I think what happened to you, george? I think the issue began with the fact that when we nominated you, you were falling short of registered charity status. You were falling short of registered charity status, which I think was the strict rule for our nomination, and we got our shoulder behind that and pushed the case very heavily. It took a little bit of doing and I think Benefact managed to change the rules slightly and they accepted, after a bit of due diligence, the good work that you were doing and went through all of your articles and so on and so forth and came to a positive conclusion. I think, before they actually let us know, we could then let you know, so I think the news got out faster than we expected, to be honest, All right, well, thank you very much for that, gavin.
George Courtice:It's a pleasure. And now, because of this increase, we're now duty-bound to register with the Charity Commission, because we're now above their threshold, their minimum threshold, below which they're not interested.
Gavin Mitchell:Well, we haven't given you any problems because of that.
George Courtice:Any dealings at that level with the Charity Commission is almost bound to be a problem.
Chris Withers:But yes, we're working on it. As the insurance company representative on the call. I am impressed with your um risk management and cyber protection. There, george, and your, your, uh, the diligence that you follow in terms of making sure that this was something genuine.
Chris Withers:But your, your reaction is um, it's perhaps not unusual to the whole movement. For good, it's such an incredibly simple process and you know this whole idea that you nominate, and and other people nominate and you win a thousand pounds. Um, in the normal case, people think it's a trick, they think it's, they think there's a catch, they think that we're going to try and sell them something. But, but it is. The purpose of the Benefact Trust, is the grant-giving charity that owns us, and what we've tried to do is make it as simple as possible for beneficiaries to receive funds. But, yeah, the assumption that there might be a catch is not a bad one from a risk management perspective as an insurance person.
Gavin Mitchell:I think it's also worth saying, chris, that George isn't a client of Allied Westminster, nor indeed are many of his village halls. A lot of your village halls will be clients of Allied Westminster, insured through us, but um, it's a living level playing field essentially for for um, for those people being nominated it, it doesn't really matter who they're insured with. I mean, village halls are village halls and this is essentially a, an award that goes out to the village hall community, if you like, not directly, but certainly as a result of the good work that george and the consortia are are doing. So it's um. It's certainly not a customer centric um award by any stretch of the imagination excellent.
Marc Smith:Well, if we can go back to the original podcast there. So I if that was in 2021 and you mentioned that there were a few of those have tried to create what you have done, but there wasn't too much success. So that was four years ago and I I think it's still the case. I had a search last week and it does seem to be a northeast thing here, so I don't know what you're doing there, but why, what is it you did that made it such a success?
George Courtice:Well, we were very lucky to have a rural community council based in Northumberland. That was very active terms of the glory days of the the noughties, when infrastructure support for the voluntary sector was quite substantial and central government were funding much of it. And I think they realized that this was going to end and therefore any self-help group would be independent of that risk and that's why they encouraged village halls to get together back in about 2006 to set up a consortium, which they helped us do. So that was one of the reasons. But you're right, I'm always amazed that it hasn't been replicated.
George Courtice:There is a network in Teesdale, but apart from that, and of course there's the West West Northampton Community Buildings Consortium, but apart from that I haven't come across it. But I could well have done. But I think ACRE would have told us if there was a burgeoning of different consortia up and down the country. I mean, I am inundated with requests for information across a whole range of different issues and of course that's partly because trustees change, retire and new ones come in and aren't aren't so well informed and want to be well informed, and so it's everything from, you know, rate relief to licenses, to bouncy castles and, of course, importantly, funding.
Marc Smith:Yeah, that's amazing actually. I mean, obviously you don't have to be a body to do some of the things that you've done, because I was on your website and the list of contractors that you have on there. I think even just like a single village hall on its own could be doing things like that. So did you reach out to contractors or did they reach out to you? How did you go about starting a list? Because I think that would be a benefit even without the consortium. It would be a benefit to village halls having you know, or areas having a list of contractors that are specialised in village halls.
George Courtice:It's interesting, Marc, that you honed in on that, because I think that was a surprise to me. I remember thinking one of the regular questions was does anyone know a good electrician, et cetera. And that's actually common to residences living in streets and things on the internet. Now People are endlessly asking aren't they, they know a good plumber, et cetera. And I thought well, someone, this could be something that would be very easy to put together. Well, someone, this could be something that would be very easy to put together. So I invited all our members to suggest suppliers across the whole range of things putting in new toilets, etc. Kitchens, roofers, everything, electricians.
George Courtice:And I had to be very careful to make sure that we weren't advising everyone to use these people yeah, so we had to protect ourselves there, and we then published it so that you can see which halls have recommended not recommended it, but suggest that they were happy with it.
George Courtice:And of course, circumstances change, the supplies change, so they need each hall needs to check up on on on them, um, but at least they've they can look at the hall, they can ring the hall up or email the hall to find out, uh, just what they were like, whether they're still in business, etc. Yeah and so, yes, it's slowly growing, uh, and I rely on members to update it.
Marc Smith:Yes, yeah, I think think it's a marvellous idea, of course it's not just the external contractors, george.
Gavin Mitchell:I mean, one of the things that caught our eye many years ago that I thought was excellent, which your consortium is doing, is the portable appliance testing, and you know you do that from within with trained volunteers to keep the cost down.
George Courtice:That is true. First I was a little nervous of this because I didn't want to undermine the local established suppliers, but I realised that village halls are spread and so that we would concentrate exclusively on village halls, and often we say no to B&Bs who want us to test their gear. It has to be village halls or stroke community buildings, uh, or their or their users, their main users. We do one or two bands who regularly go to different halls because they too need to have their gear. Um, perhaps tested, um, but mostly it is village halls and community buildings, yes, or their users.
George Courtice:We are clearly cheaper than going to the commercial market, and the reason we are is mainly because we wanted to make sure that small halls with perhaps fewer than five appliances, who might be the ones that are at greatest risk to the public using kettles, et cetera would actually bother to have their stuff tested, because, after all, it is, when it comes down to it, a health and safety issue. And we're pleased to be able to have done that to subsidise the smaller ones by charging the bigger ones slightly more. And that's worked for what? 15 years now? And is growing, growing, continues to grow, you know, and is our main, I have to be honest, is our main source of regular income and it's very reasonable too.
Gavin Mitchell:If I remember correctly, um for for for small halls with, say, five appliances, it's somewhere in the region 15 pounds, that's right. But built for large halls with more than what? Is it 30, 31 appliances?
George Courtice:I think it's a pound pair appliance, so it's, it's incredibly reasonable yes, yes, yes and but it and it makes sense for obviously for the halls, thank goodness, and that's why it also makes sense for us, you know, as a consortium. You know, that's why it also makes sense for us as a consortium. It means that we can get around. We have approximately 10 volunteer testers who are all trained, and between us we're now doing about 50, 55 different places.
Marc Smith:That's brilliant. So did you put them on a training course to do the PAT testing?
George Courtice:It's all done online. It's an excellent course, they can do it at their leisure, but they have to have a test at the end to make sure they're competent, and it's done through an organisation that also supplies our PAT kits, of which we have four, and the only capital cost, the only capital investments the consortium have, apart from the general wealth of our members and knowledge, is that are these kits, is that are these kits, and we probably have I don't know about £1,200 invested in them, and they need to be replaced occasionally.
Marc Smith:Yes, brilliant, but I'm still amazed that there's not more people doing this or more village halls doing this, because doing that really makes sense, especially if it's rural, especially where we are trying to get people out. Is is quite a challenge, but if you have it as a as a you know, a local initiative, as part of a consortium, it does make more, more sense yes it really does yes I.
George Courtice:I think it's probably a step too far for traditional infrastructure organizations that that are being have been squeezed over the last decade hugely. I think very few local authorities would be funding people to advise. Village halls Might be the people who could organize this, but it is quite time consuming, and so I think they would concentrate on other things other than that. But you're right, right, they could. I'm surprised that they haven't said look, we need to replicate this, and let's start on the basis of a service that we know would be desirable, which would be pat testing absolutely well.
Marc Smith:The last time you were on the podcast was during covid, and you did mention that you were unsure of the future post COVID, so we're now lucky to be in that time. So what is your opinion on this now? Because you are in quite a unique position to see the bigger picture with all the village halls that you work with. So has it returned to normal? Are you seeing more usage of halls since then?
George Courtice:I think it's varied. I would be very loathe to argue that there has been. Obviously there was a real drop during COVID. It has, from my experience the hall that I'm associated with. It has bounced back and even improved, and that's certainly the case for other halls as well. But some halls, I suspect, are still really struggling.
George Courtice:I have to say that Covid provided for a windfall in Northumberland to many village halls who were on the ball at the time and we were certainly advising them. The COVID grants were made available and spread over perhaps an 18-month, two-year period and these grants were given to halls with, I have to say, a minimal amount of kind of control. So mostly, if you get, you know, if you're lucky to get a couple of thousand pounds from someone, they are likely to not unreasonably to ask how you spent it, et cetera, et cetera. And I as one of the consortium advisors was saying to them look, if you get this money from your local authority, okay from central government, money from your local authority via okay, from central government, but via the local authority, for goodness sake, spend it on COVID-related costs, all the stuff we had to put up, the signs, et cetera, et cetera.
George Courtice:And also possibly the reduced income as a consequence of the constraints of meeting. But it became pretty clear very early on that no one was going to be quibbling about this or wanting any information as to how it was spent. So a hall in the following anyway would could have received well over a thirty thousand pounds during that period, which for some would be a complete windfall and a surprise. And so some halls have suddenly found that their reserves have increased. They've obviously got to spend it on those things that they're obliged to spend it on, which is improving the quality of the hall, etc. So that is one of the unintended consequences.
Gavin Mitchell:I think that some halls are now financially more secure than they were. I think I think in northumberland you were probably luckier than than many areas, george. I think it was a bit of a postcode lottery in terms of getting the funding and I know that certainly we ensure halls the length and the breadth of the country and in some areas they were having real problems getting any funding or support and we had to supply various template letters and letters you could send your MP and so on and so forth, because it wasn't a level playing field in terms of the funding, in terms of the funding, but you're absolutely right, in terms of once they did get funding, there was very little scrutiny in terms of how the money was spent, which personally I think that's fine, because I think there's no need for admin, village hall trustees or adults. Every penny counts and every penny will be invested wisely for the continuity of the village hall.
George Courtice:Yeah, I mean certainly that was my conclusion in the end, and I think it was the conclusion of the decision makers that by then there was talk of money going astray, invented private companies et cetera, whereas at least with village halls and the protection of the charity commission requirements etc. They received money was going to be spent safely.
Gavin Mitchell:yes, indeed, indeed yeah, good governance excellent.
Marc Smith:I think that's a podcast for another day, that one probably go off on a tangents, uh, but yeah, well, thank you. Thank you very much for all three of you for coming back on the podcast to talk about this. In the past few podcasts I've focused a lot on legislation, so breaking up with these fuel goods stories is actually it's fantastic. So yeah thank you very much all for your time. It's really much appreciated and it's been a joy to chat with you.
Gavin Mitchell:Thank you. Thank you, Marc.
George Courtice:Thank you, Marc, thank you, Thank you, Marc, thank you all.
Marc Smith:Many thanks to our headline sponsor and specialist village hall insurance provider, Allied Westminster, the home of Village Guard, for making this podcast possible, and to online booking system provider, hallmaster, who also sponsor our podcast and can be found at Hallmaster. co. uk. You've been listening to the Village Halls podcast, a unique listening community for Britain's village community and church halls and anyone interested in the vital services they provide. Don't forget entries for the Village Halls Inspiration Awards 2025 are open now until the 30th of September, so visit our website to find out more and get involved. We will be back again soon with another episode. For more information, visit thevillagehallspodcast. com, where you'll also find links to our social media pages. Thanks again for listening in and until next time. Goodbye for now.
