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Monthly Report for the Heritage Lottery Fund October 2020

 

St Sylvester’s Church Renovation and Community Project, Chivelstone Parish, Kingsbridge

Work during October concentrated on inviting tenders for the renovation works, arranging for water and telecom services, applying for a bat licence and planning remote community activities, updates and fund raising.

 
Tasks carried out in the Month
Project Administration
  • We await appointment of the main Contractor in order to update the Church Insurances for the period of the repair and renovation work.
Financials
  • The Diocese Loan to facilitate the project cashflow will be applied for when the project timetable has been finalised.
  • We continue to look at innovative ways to raise funds and for example are developing with the younger more IT savy members of the Community a virtual ‘Church Jigsaw’ whereby individuals donate for individual pieces to complete the picture.
Heritage Works
  • This month the Project Architect team have been working on;
    • Finalisation of the RIBA Stage 4 drawings
    • Building Regulation Application
    • Four Expressions of Interests were received from interested contractors and all were invited to tender on 9th October with a tender deadline of 9th Some of the contractors have attended the Church site to seek more detail with which to complete the tender documentation.
  • We await receipt of the Bat EPS Mitigation Licence from Natural England but understand that because of the impacts of Covid 19 this will take longer than usual. We are very grateful for NHLF consideration and agreement to cover the additional bat supervision and monitoring costs from the contingency sum.
  • We have received a quote from South West Water for a connection to their system and are currently finalising the best route of the supply pipe from the connection in an adjacent field to the church.
Communications
  • We await confirmation that our BT business broadband connection will need to include a phone line for the onsite contractor.
  • The project website continues to be updated and we are seeing an increase in hits to the site. We are averaging about 10 hits a day with a peak of 45 when we launched our new blog.
Community Engagement/Activity Plan
  • We continue to be proactive and positive in trying to implement as many of the planned activities around the church as possible or coming up with virtual alternatives. The Covid 19 restrictions and the current anticipated lockdown are frustrating this process.
  • We have now created and launched a regular church ‘blog’ to update the community on project progress and are looking at setting up a You Tube Channel where videos can be posted related to the church renovation and other activities.
  • Following on from our very successful ‘Zoom Bat Talk’ we are thinking of producing further online talks with our project partner South Devon AONB.
  • We hosted a visit by our local MP Anthony Magnall on 26th October who was very impressed with our Project and offered his full support to its success.
 Volunteer Time
  • Volunteer time this month equated to 47.5 hours mainly working on project admin and finances, supporting the Project Architect and tender process, fundraising and implementation of the Activity Plan.