Blogs

I suspect that the government spending review and the reduction in grants to local councils and other statutory bodies has not escaped your notice! It has been big news for some time now.

Following requests for advice on what to do with snow and ice in car parks we have posted this to the knowledge base:

http://www.dorsethalls.net/node/633

Sadly, the annual capital grants programme that DCA has administered for Dorset County Council is being discontinued from the end of this financial year as part of the £48.5m of necessary savings the county have to make in the light of the public funding deficit. It is likely that West Dorset may follow, we have not heard anything from North Dorset.

A new Version of ACRE Information Sheet 16 - "How Green is your hall?" has been issued and is now available to view in the ACRE pages of the Information Section and a printed version is available from the downloads page.

Many halls will have some concerns over the plans to abolish cheques. They are not alone, many charities and small businesses are concerned about the issue so attached is a briefing paper on what progress is being made to address the concerns of this sector.

The BIG Lottery Fund is investing an additional £75 million specifically for rural and urban community-use buildings through its flagship programme, Reaching Communities.

 If your premises sells or supplies alcohol, you must now hold an age verification policy and ensure you offer smaller serving measures to your customers.

In April this year we announced the first three conditions of the Licensing Act 2003 (mandatory licensing conditions) order 2010. They apply to all licensed premises and those with a club premises certificate in England and Wales. They were:

 A revised version of VHIS07, Village Halls Insurance Cover, is now available on the ACRE pages.

Many thanks to Peter Lawrence from Aon for his assistance with the update.

Despite what you may have read or heard in the media, the vetting and barring (VBS) scheme has not been scrapped – some aspects of it have been put on hold while it is reviewed.