The following is reprinted from the May 2009 newsletter of Spondon Community Association

This was distributed to SCA members only; you can download a PDF version by clicking here.

The Neighbourhood Board is planning to start an "electronic newsletter" in then near future, with news and comment about Spondon. If you would like to receive it or want further information, .

From the Secretary

Spring is here again and it is time for our village-wide issue of SCAN; although we can’t compete with the article about Spondon in April’s issue of Derbyshire Life. I hope you all saw it. Ashley Franklin just happened to contact us before a Village Improvement Committee award party in the Village Hall and was invited to come along. I think he picked up on our enthusiasm for encouraging community involvement in Spondon, which is just what I will be doing in this article. Spondon has really ‘arrived’ now we’ve been featured in Derbyshire Life. As well as a nice article, Ashley Franklin did us proud with a fabulous collection of photographs - more details here.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Roy Battelle who has chaired the Community Association for the last three years. Many of you will have read his articles in SCAN or seen him around the Village Hall. He has retired for a well-deserved rest, but is still around giving us his support.

So, not for the first time in our thirty year history, we are once again without a Chairperson. We have overcome this before but for the last six months our small Executive Committee has been filling the gap. We all have our individual jobs within the SCA but the extra responsibilities now make our work harder. Two of us are sharing the Chair’s job at meetings but we feel that we cannot carry on for too long in this way. If we can share the load with another couple of committee members it would help a lot.

We need more people to come forward to help us run the Village Hall. The work is very rewarding as our Hall is very well used and we get many compliments from users. Otherwise in the years to come, we may see the Hall close or run by the City Council (which is unlikely in these financially difficult times). If you value this facility then please help us out by joining the SCA and coming on the committee. We don’t expect you to leap into the Chair’s job without some experience first. We employ a Hall Manager and Cleaner so you would not be expected to take on any of their tasks and we are a friendly lot.

After all the improvements to the roof, windows and the installation of a new boiler, we have been looking at a possible refurbishment of the kitchen. However this is probably not something we will take on until we have more people on the committee to help out with all the extra work involved in a project like this.

We were also sorry to see our Hall Manager, Carole Chambers, leave us at the beginning of April. She has been with us for two years and has done a brilliant job in that time. So our committee has also had to cope with employing a new manager. Luckily we had some excellent applications to choose from and have now appointed Dave Borrington. Once Dave has settled in, we’re hoping that he’ll be available at the Hall at regular times.

Carole has also resigned as our Bar Manager. We will be fulfilling any bar commitments already made but unfortunately we are not able to run any bars for new functions until we fill that post. The trouble is that it is a very intermittent job which entails working weekend nights, so not particularly attractive to most people. However we will continue to look for ways of solving this situation, as it is one of the reasons for the continuing popularity of the Hall.

For more information about this article, please

Anita Hayes, SCA Secretary