Community Q&A - February 2025

What is our new grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund going to pay for? What are the latest plans for the building work? How will we create a financially sustainable community pub and hub? Read on for a transcript of our Community Q&A led by OAK Chairperson Judith Gardner and Community Engagement Officer Kim Greig, held at The Oxford on February 2nd, 2025.

Community Q&A, Feb 2nd

Q: How will you compete financially with the Picture House, the Youth Club and the Lion Café which have all come into being since you first proposed the need for The Oxford to become a community hub?

There are lots of great pubs and venues in Kington, and we’re not setting out to compete with them. While The Oxford has been a much-loved pub for centuries, the main income stream for the future will be its accommodation and food offerings. The pub has 6 en-suite B&B rooms, this is a sustainable source of income which will enable us to fund the community and youth side, which will be based in other parts of the building, for example the function room (the biggest in Kington, next to The Burton). The project is rooted in creating a space that is valued by everyone, commercially viable and continued into the future.

Q: What is the National Lottery Heritage Fund £92,000 grant being used for?

This fund has to be applied for in two phases, a development phase (which we are currently in), followed by the delivery phase. We need to apply for about £1.5 million total investment from the fund. This first development phase is what the £92,000 is for and the Heritage Fund have strict rules about how it can be spent... It is to pay for what’s required to develop our bid for the rest of the money needed. It cannot be used on any capital works, so you won’t see anything happening on the building at this point.

It will be used for:

-          Our architects to develop their drawings so the building work can go to tender

-          Paying for someone to manage and evaluate the whole process – this is mandated as part of the grant

-          Assessing our governance – whether continuing as a CIC is best for the long-term viability of the project, or whether we should look at an alternative community-based structure?

-          Bringing in expertise from the hospitality sector to ensure a watertight business plan

-          Carrying out specialist surveys such as the drains

Once we’ve delivered these requirements, and only if the Heritage Fund assessors think we are ready to be considered for a capital grant, then we will be eligible to apply for the large amount of money needed to actually repair the building and deliver the vision.

Securing this initial funding is huge, we never imagined when we set out that we would achieve this. It brings a unique opportunity for Kington, and shows that an old building can be made useful and endure into the future.

Q: What are the next steps to apply for the full grant?

Our next steps, alongside completing our delivery phase goals, is to bring together our business plan, programme of activities and architects plans, to present them to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, we hope later this year. At this meeting, we will either be given the go-ahead to apply for the full grant, or we’ll be advised to work more on some areas. The earliest we could possibly submit our bid for the capital money would be November. It then takes 5 months before we hear the result, so March 2026.  We have a 2 year window to apply for the full grant after the delivery phase starts, so even if they don’t feel we’re ready in September, we’ll be able to keep working on the plans and submit later.

The NLHF have assigned two consultants to work on our development phase, they report to the Heritage Fund and their role is to ensure we get properly ready for the full application. The consultants visited in January and loved the building and the community aspect of the project. They are specialists in heritage related community projects and work for the NLHF to make sure that we know what we’re doing and have a strong business plan. We’ll also be employing a hospitality consultant to plan for the food and catering option. Other exciting news,  one of the team who helped Hay Castle win a £4.5 million NLHF bid is giving time to help us, too.

We have to remember that The National Lottery Heritage Fund will not fund 100% of a project’s costs.  So we’re busy applying for other sources of funding, too.

Q: People really love the barn as an events space. What will you do with it when you’ve converted the building?

We love the barn and it’s definitely included in plans going forwards! Our original idea when we purchased the building was to use the barn as a dedicated youth space. But since being forced to use it as our main indoor venue, we’ve found that it is the perfect location for many things, including live music, art workshops, writing classes and a whole range of events. Therefore, we’ll definitely keep using the barn even after we’re inside the main building.

If we’d been able to move inside the building straight away, we might never have explored the outside space as much as we have done. When we bought The Oxford, the barn was full of wood and had been used as a general dumping ground. It took almost 2 months to clear and prepare the space, but now, and with heating, people love it and have reported feeling welcome and inspired by the courtyard and barn. We even have our first wedding booked in the barn and courtyard this summer!

Q: Are events rooms part of the vision?

When we first looked at buying The Oxford as a community venue, we looked at all the venues in Kington, surveyed what people who run classes or events thought and whether a new one would be useful. What came back was a resounding ‘yes’, especially if it was affordable, warm, had parking, and operated as a space for all the community.Our aim is that The Oxford will offer a versatile, multi-purpose venue that is attractive to a diverse range of groups and providers. For example to offer partnerships with public health services in Herefordshire, which we’ve already started doing with the drop-in clinics we held last year and in January. Of course, we’ll be expanding on our community events programme, too.

Q: How will you improve the function rooms to make them as attractive as the barn?

Our function room is large, with standing room capacity at around 180, seated capacity around 80/90. It’s Kington’s largest indoor space apart from The Burton which is a similar side. We believe it was created by Lady Jane Harley (Countess of Oxford) as a ballroom, more recently it famously held live sheepshearing events …

We have an amazing team of volunteers who bring design and creative experience. There are plenty of ideas and skills – and we’d love more volunteers to join us who can contribute in this area, for example help with thinking about lighting. The team that works on this will create vision and mood boards of the different proposals for how the rooms could look, and we’d invite the public to come and give their opinions.

Our architects are already encouraging us to think about sound and lighting, soundproofing, investing in good doors. We don’t have anyone with experience in lighting design on our team at the moment, so we’d love to find someone with these skills!  (as we said this, the most perfect person for this role came forward and volunteered to assist…)

Q: What building work is needed?

A great deal of work is needed to get the building electrical and fire-safety compliant and watertight, as well as making it functional, accessible, and a warm and welcoming community space.

A big chunk of the work will be electrical – our current electricity supply is not adequate to power the whole building, with all the lights and showers etc on at the same time. We need the National Grid to install a new power cable, which we’ve been estimated would cost around £80,000 itself.

Nothing in the building is compliant with fire safety standards, so making it compliant is a huge piece of work – the requirements are complex and how they will be met is very expensive. For example, every floor from cellars upwards needs to have special fire-retardent material put under the floorboards, all the walls in the corridors need to be lined, the doors made fire-proof. It will be worth it though as in the end we’ll have a building in which the occupants will have an escape time of one hour from anywhere inside the property.

In our budget, we have a large amount allocated for fixing the roof, guttering and parapets. Our architects have also mentioned the need to improve ventilation in the roof.

There are 2 boilers in the building, though one is currently not working. In Winter we need to keep some heating on to help prevent more deterioration of the building.

To improve accessibility, there will be a fully accessible downstairs loo. We did hope to be able to include a high-needs changing facility but this is something that’s had to go on the back-burner for a while.

The kitchen is currently upstairs, this would ideally be moved downstairs. There are various ideas for the top floor, including more B&B rooms and a manager’s flat.

Q: Are there any similar projects in the country we can use as template?

There are plenty of community owned pubs, some of which we’ve visited and are learning from but we’ve not yet found anywhere that is a community hub that is sustained by being part of a pub and B&B – this model is what makes The Oxford quite a rare community project. But we’re still looking and keen to learn from anywhere that has similarities.

Q: If people want to look inside, can that be organised?

Yes, we need to do visits under careful health and safety guidance so by appointment only! Or as an open day - we did a couple of public open days last year, and we plan more for later this year, when the weather is warmer.

Q: How effectively do you feel you’re interacting with the local Kington community, especially the youth?

We’ve a long way to go obviously and our approach is to get our foundations in place so that we have something credible and most importantly sustainable to offer.  We’re fortunate in having Kim leading us on our community engagement. Kim, who is a youth worker by training and has implemented programmes in UK and around the world, is making sure we have these foundations - the policies, procedures, human capacity, appropriate space, and heating in place. Young people choose for themselves, and as we grow and learn, and the place evolves as a space for all then we hope it will be young people themselves who identify how the space, and the events and provisions it can support,  can work for them. We’re already seeing more and more people coming to our events, and different groups and ages of people, too. And we are reaching out to the schools to make sure the teachers and students know what is on and how they might get involved, or take the space for their own events.

“It’s an amazing space, and I’m glad that someone’s doing something with it that’s important to the community. I will have great memories of coming to The Oxford for events with my gran.”
- Zach, Q&A participant and regular attendee

Q: Will you become a charitable trust?

Our understanding is that trading is problematic as a charitable trust and we do need to trade to sustain the community benefits of the project. In the next few months, we will be working with the Plunkett Foundation to review our governance structure. We became a CIC originally after a lot of research, as it was the most straightforward way to get off the ground. But this will absolutely evolve in response to new needs and opportunities as they arise. We see ourselves as the current caretakers of what will become a wonderful and enduring resource for Kington, and we will ultimately organise and structure in whatever way is best for Kington looking ahead to the future.

If you missed this Q&A but would like a chance to ask your questions or give your thoughts, look out for our next session, or drop in at one of our events or regular openings (Wednesdays 10am-12.30pm, and Sundays 12-4pm).