Village Halls will be hit by added running costs as a result of inadvertent consequences of the Budget say representatives. The Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) rise from 6 to 9.5% will mean for a typical Village Hall with a £1,000 premium the rise will cost an additional £35 per year, and bring IPT payments close to £200 p.a. for a larger hall. The £500,000 generated for the Government will come from hire charges paid by small voluntary groups.
The National Village Halls Forum had asked the Government to initiate a grant scheme to support VAT payments and now also argues that either village halls should be exempt from the insurance increase. Or that as village halls have recently asked, the revenue should be recycled into helping trustees share information.
Alan West of Ringmer Village Hall, East Sussex, and Vice Chairman of the Forum, which speaks for the 10,000 charitable and parish council run halls in England said that discussions need to be opened about how a grant scheme might operate, the benefits of the scheme and confirm the funding required. He said “The estimated funding of £7,000,000 is less than other Budget allocations for similar initiatives and it would spread small but important economic and social benefits throughout the UK.”
There is a precedent in the excellent churches repair grant scheme, which is of great help to those maintaining our wonderful heritage of churches, but it does highlight the lack of a level playing field between organisations managing the heritage of community facilities within individual villages.
There is an argument to be made about the even-handedness with which we treat levels of democracy: The cost of helping volunteers maintain our polling stations (some of which are listed) in good order would be considerably smaller than the repairs to the Houses of Parliament.
Forum Secretary Mary Mathers, from Dorset, said “Reference is made by Government to Gift Aid and other charity reliefs which are of course a huge benefit to the wider charity sector. However, small charities such as village halls are not well placed to use them and the potential tax recovery by village halls does not match the cost of VAT”.
Sharing information about the available reliefs and successful forms of fundraising is one of many ways in which the support of the ACRE Network is important to small, grassroots charities. Government says it has allocated £2 million for the ACRE Network this year but it has to cover a wide range of work throughout rural England, only a tiny fraction of which is available to help village halls, and that fraction is under threat.
The increase in the extra free childcare hours from 15 to 30 hrs in the Budget Statement is good news for many. But it has unforeseen consequences for Village Halls. Alan pointed out: “Many Village Halls will be unable to meet this commitment because they do not have the separate toilet, kitchen and meeting facilities for other daytime users. Such work needs budgetary provision to support halls to adapt to accommodate increased childcare hours. However, yet again, payment for this work will incur irrecoverable VAT”.
