Stowey Centre Project

The current Nether Stowey Village Hall is over 100 years old and was built in 1922; sadly, it is no longer fit for purpose. The hall’s income had hit record lows before the pandemic, resulting in the hall running at a significant loss. Unfortunately, hall users did not return after the pandemic due to its dilapidated state. Once the Billiard room had been condemned as dangerous, the charity closed the hall permanently in April 2022. A feasibility study concluded that rebuilding a modern hall on the same site would not be possible due to the limited access and size of the site.

That is why the Nether Stowey Village Hall and Recreation Ground charity has been working on a project to relocate the village hall to the recreation ground. The unofficial name for the relocation and rebuild is the Stowey Centre project.

The project will provide a modern village hall with a commercial-standard kitchen and bar, a stage, a sizeable multipurpose function room, a meeting room, and a car park. It will also provide changing rooms for recreational activities. Due to the pandemic, the outside will become the new indoors, and the new centre will provide a serving hatch, externally covered seating, public toilets, and large bi-folding doors and windows.

The car park will have allocated electric vehicle charging points, bike storage, and safe pedestrian access to encourage green transport use.

The building will be located in the north-western corner of the recreation ground, backing onto the cemetery boundary alongside the A39, which has access to the old A39. A site plan, a block plan of the building and an elevation plan can be viewed below.

The Planning Portal lets users view full plans (planning number 36/21/00030) and supporting documents.

October 2024 – Project Update

Since 2022, the project team has experienced several delays. First, there was a backlog of planning applications due to the pandemic. Second, further delays were experienced when Somerset County Council became a unitary authority, resulting in significant redundancies in the planning department. Third, and most significantly, an ecology survey established that the site lies within a conservation area for rare species of bats.

Specialist ecologists must assess whether the project’s mitigating factors, such as planting native trees and low-level lighting, will not negatively impact the bat population.

We have been reassured that Planning Permission will be granted (see SDC letter of support) once these assessments have been completed. We determined that the project will not adversely impact the area’s ecology, and the charity has found alternative land to plant replacement bat habitat.

In the meantime, the project team has secured £50,000 of funding from the Sedgemoor District Council Rural Village Hall Capital fund, which will be used to perform preliminary work. Funding applications to the Football Foundation, National Lottery Community Foundation, HPC Community Mitigation Fund, and various other grants are progressing, amounting to circa £1,000,000.

Grant providers ask for ‘match funding’ – this is like a deposit when asking the bank for a mortgage to buy a house. The project’s match funding will come from the sale of the old village hall that has been granted outline planning permission for four affordable dwellings to maximise the value of the land when trustees market the site for sale. See the planning permission portal for further details:

A site plan, a block plan of the building and an elevation plan can be viewed below: