South Gloucestershire | Archive | 2005 | November | 5
From the archive, first published Saturday 5th Nov 2005.
A PARISH near Thornbury is being forced to spend thousands of pounds of public money to buy a building that was given to the community by a local benefactor.
Councillors in Almondsbury are looking at a purchase price of £120,000 from local taxpayers to buy a redundant church hall.
Church of England property chiefs warned they could be forced to sell the redundant Davis Institute on the open market unless the parish council agreed to take it off their hands.
The Institute - once a thriving community centre - was provided for the village by a wealthy local benefactor more than a century ago and was later passed into the trust of Compton Greenfield Parish Church.
The building is now under-used and falling into disrepair and church elders want to ditch it along with its precious car parking.
But loss of parking would also jeopardise the future of the nearby Easter Compton village hall and hall users recently appealed to the council to find the cash to safeguard the land and avert disaster.
Church leaders refused to sell the council the car park alone - citing a duty to secure the highest possible return from the sale.
Under pressure from all sides, parish leaders have now reluctantly agreed to enter negotiations with the church with a view to a buying the hall.
It means they could soon be spending public money on a building which in recent years has already received council support totalling around £50,000. Cllr Peter Maggs told Tuesday's meeting: "It is highly unfortunate that the parish council is having to buy a property that was effectively given to the village." One Easter Compton pensioner with a long memory asserted: "The Davis family provided the hall as a reading room for the use of the whole village.
The church shouldn't be getting the money."
Furious Cllr Di Wilson railed against the purchase.
She said: "This is going to take a lot of public money and frankly I'm appalled. This land wasn't given solely for the benefit of the church. It was given for the community to use as a car park. It's a wonderful asset for the village."
The vicar, the Rev Dr Berj Topalian, said the rules governing the disposal of the property were strict.
"If there was any way of giving it to the community without aggravation then we would do it," he said. "There were fears that the land might have got into the hands of developers who might have wanted it for access.
"At least the parish council is a body which represents the interests of the village. It would be open to them to dispose of the institute later. "At this stage there is still some talking to do."
He said he was aware that some people felt they were paying for something that already belonged the community, but added: "That is not the case. The car park was given outright to the Parochial Church Council as the deeds clearly show."
Dr Topalian said the sale proceeds would not be available to the church to use as it saw fit locally.
"They will go into a Charity Commission pot and there is no way we would be able to touch the capital."
© Newsquest Media Group 2008