The Closure of Albury Village Hall

After an extended review the Parish Council has reluctantly decided that it can no longer afford to operate the Village Hall and so it will close at the end of the year.

The Village Hall has been making a growing loss for a long time and whilst the Parish Council was happy to subsidise these losses, the situation is no longer sustainable.  Combined with statutory and other commitments, continuing the subsidy would have made the long term financial position of the Council untenable - in short we would have run out of money.

The increase in losses has been driven by a number of factors:

• Bookings have never returned to pre-covid levels and we do not believe we could recover them even if we did we have the resources to mount a sustained campaign
• Costs have increased significantly.   We have taken aggressive action to reduce all expenses and do not believe that they can be reduced further
• Our commitments elsewhere have grown (in particular those associated with maintenance) and to reduce those to make the costs of running the hall acceptable would, we believe, require actions that would be even more unpalatable to parishioners

The historical use of the building and its position in village life have made this a hard decision but it is one we believe the Parish Council have had to take.

We would like to thank all the people who have used it over the years and also to extend our apologies to those long term renters for whom this will undoubtedly create a problem.