Building Work

Our first Urgent Works project, carried out a few months ago, was to physically separate our Gym 1 building from the Library, to prevent the spread of dry rot.

This second phase involves repairs to the roofs and gutters of the council offices, the baths front building and the fire station tower and is designed to stop the water getting into these three buildings and in doing so to stop the pigeons getting in. These buildings should then start to dry out and we will be able to tackle the next two major issues – the pigeon contamination and the dry rot.

We asked a number of contractors to tender for the work and have now selected the lowest tenderer, Happy Days Social Enterprise Building Contractors, to carry out the work which will commence on Monday 12 June and run for about 6 weeks.

The cost of this work is covered by money from Calderdale Council which came to us on signing the lease, from the Sowerby Bridge Development Board (who two weeks ago agreed to a top-up of their original grant) and from members’ and other donations and we have just enough to complete this phase, so long as there aren’t too many “unforeseens”. There isn’t any spare cash so we won’t be able to expand the project at this stage.

The work includes setting up a site compound in the service yard with scaffolding along parts of the rear walls and contractors’ traffic will occupy the car park. By a coincidence our work overlaps with work the council is planning in the Library so there will be two separate contractors on site at the same time – the Library contract taking a lot longer than ours. Unfortunately this means that the Fire Station car park and service yard will be fully occupied and therefore it will be closed to the public for the first six weeks at least.

Warning notices will go up this week on the car park but once it is closed on the 12 June it will be in the full control of the building contractor and there will be no public access.

We will try to keep this disruption to a minimum but please bear with us in this.

Once this phase of the work is completed we will be seeking volunteers to help with the clean-up and the start of the next list of projects.

Running Costs

Building projects are costly affairs and we do not have any spare cash to set aside for the next project, nor to cover the running costs – the insurance of the buildings and for some of the mains services.

We members are all volunteers, putting in our time freely, filled with enthusiasm, driven by this great idea and we are for ever grateful for the donations we receive but inevitably there is never enough! Please donate anything you can manage and if you are waged, do it via the LocalGiving website so that we can benefit from Gift Aid:

If you have any questions please phone me (office hours) on 01422 834291 or speak to any of the directors.

Thank you All

Phil Hawdon