Oakham Town Council has stepped in to secure the immediate future of a historic community hall which almost ran out of funds to meet operating costs. 

The trustees of Oakham's Victoria Hall's secured a £2,800 grant from Oakham Town Council recently to help see it through the next few months after a loss of tenants and diminishing grants hit funds. 

The High Street hall, which celebrated its 125th anniversary this year, is now actively looking for grants and fundraising to get the finances back into a healthy condition. 

The town council, which used to have its offices at the hall but moved out to its current premises several years ago, said it held an extraordinary meeting in mid-September to consider the grant, as the trustees had just missed the deadline for that month's full council meeting.  

Clerk Christopher Evans said the council was sympathetic to the situation the trustees found themselves in. 

He said: "We said 'We want to get you through this period of instability' and we gave them an interim payment of £2,800 that our chair (Cllr Adam Lowe) thought would get them through until Christmas and keep the wolves from the door." 

The clerk said the vote could have gone any way but the council decided it wanted to support the hall and its long history in Oakham. The latest set of accounts for the charity show it had an annual income of around £52,000 – of which £38,000 of that was from rental rates and the majority of the remainder from grants.



Victoria Hall has been hosting fundraisers to try and meet the essential funds to keep running. (Photo: Nub News)

The grant application made by the trustees said: "We urgently need short term (three months) support for the ongoing running of this unique and much-loved hall, to enable us to have time to restructure the staffing, promote the hall with a functioning website and some brochure, and secure other funding which we are applying for, but that takes longer to secure.  

"We have several medium-term plans in place to raise funds, including launching a Crowdfunding initiative, applications to local trusts for a new boiler, and applications to national funders such as the Lottery for other upgrades such as bathrooms, carpets, decorating.   

"We have set up a new Friends of the Hall fundraising group and have engaged a company to promote the downstairs two front rooms for letting.  

"We are short of our immediate running costs due to a drop in income matched with an increase in costs.  It is critical that we have time to give the board, (which has several new members), and the Friends of the Hall to turn this around.  

"It would be much more difficult without this grant, as it is hard to raise urgent funds currently due to foundations being oversubscribed and the perception that Rutland is an affluent county that should be self – sufficient.  

"The risk is that by not having funds to pay the bills and the staff for the next three months this will turn into a downward spiral that will be very hard to recover from, and the reputation of the hall and the town will suffer."  

Trustee Joanna Burrows said, like many charities, the hall had not fully recovered from the effects of the pandemic. Earlier this year there had been a manager in place to hire out the hall, but the trial had not worked and now the hall has a couple of part time staff. She said after two shops which were renting space left, the finances had been impacted but there is now a new renter in place. 

The venue, which is also home to Barclays bank two days a week, now needs to find £16,000 to replace the boiler. Half of the funds have been found but match funding is needed. 

Joanna said: "We will keep it going. There does seem to be a bit of ill will, which I think is a legacy of the cinema plans as the town thought we were going against it, when the truth is they did not raise the money for it." 

She said rather than criticise, it would be nice if people from the community pitched in to help. 

Chairperson of the trustees Tom Tyler, said he was keen to impress that the many of the trustees were new and were working voluntarily to keep the hall going. 

He said: "Like many businesses we are facing increased running costs, but we have just got to push forward and run the hall prudently. There is a perception we are funded by the town council or Rutland County Council which is not the case. We are a completely independent charity which is self-funded. People could support the hall by considering it for hire and attending events, so we can get it back to where it was pre-covid."