Hiring Costs Review

• Groups
• Hiring Structure
• Hire Charges – Standard Hourly Rates
• Hire Charges – Discounts for Longer Hires
• Hire Charges – Additional Charges

Offord Village Hall, just like everyone else, has not escaped the effects of inflation over the last few years. Unfortunately, we can no longer swallow the increased costs without jeopardising the future of the hall. We have recently undertaken a thorough review of our hiring charges and structure, to ensure that we can meet our running costs whilst we continue to provide this wonderful resource for the community.

The following changes will come into effect from 1 January 2025:

Groups

All hirers will fall into one of the following groups:

Village Groups: Recognised local groups/organisations i.e. local non-profit-making or charitable community groups as shown at Annex A and complying with the terms therein. These groups will attract preferential standard and Saturday evening rates. The following groups are recognised local groups:

• The Offord Bowls Club
• The Offord Women’s Institute
• Senior Citizens
• Offord Gardeners’ Association
• Offord Tots
• All Saints’ Parochial Church Council
• Offord Cluny and Offord Darcy Parish Council
• The Thursday Club
• Brownies/Rainbows
• Crafters
• Offord Neighbourhood Watch

Regular Users: Private individuals, ‘commercial’ users (e.g. classes) or other hirers (e.g. non-profit-making or charitable groups not recognised as Village groups) who use the hall on a regular basis (usually weekly). This group will attract a reduced hourly weekday rate only.

Private Users: Private individuals (e.g. for parties, receptions), ‘commercial’ users (e.g. fairs), other hirers (e.g. non-profit-making or charitable groups not recognised as Village groups) using the hall on an irregular/one-off basis. This group will attract a standard hourly weekday and weekend rate, and a premium Saturday evening rate.

Local Government: Local Authority, County or District users (not recognised as Village Groups). This group will attract hourly weekday rates only.

Hiring Structure

The current mixture of hourly rates and session rates is confusing for hirers and challenging to manage and administer. We will therefore simplify things by doing away with sessions and having a single standard hourly rate and a premium Saturday evening rate per group.

We will also reduce the minimum hiring period from two hours to one hour. After one hour, bookings will be charged pro rata in increments of 15 minutes. For example, a booking of 1 hour and 45 minutes will be charged as such (not 2 hours).

Clear-up/set-up time of 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after each booking will still be included free of charge.

Hire Charges

Standard Hourly Rates

Discounts for longer hires

For Local Government and Private Users, the following discounts will be applied to the entire booking based on the duration of the booking:

• 4-5.75 hours: 10%
• 6+ hours: 20%

Additional Charges

The following items/resources are available to use at an additional cost (per hire period):

• Projector: £5
• BluRay player: £5
• Microphones (handheld): £5
• Children’s toys* (e.g. for birthday parties): £10