Witney News - Grants worth £88,500 agreed

Grants worth £88,500 agreed

West Oxfordshire communities in general and sports enthusiasts in particular are all set to benefit from a series of grants jointly worth almost £88,500 just agreed by the Cabinet.

Biggest beneficiaries are the people of Stonesfield whose village hall is to be renovated and improved with the help of a grant worth £55,259. This money from West Oxfordshire District Council represents just under half the estimated cost of reinstating the hall’s wooden floor, revamping the stage and improving the sports changing rooms.

Stonesfield Village Hall is already the community's focal point. When the improvements are completed towards the end of the summer, it will be the venue for badminton, short tennis, aerobics, martial arts training, gym sessions for toddlers and amateur dramatics productions among many other uses.

Local dinghy sailors, cricketers, footballers and the communities of South Leigh and Milton -under-Wychwood are meanwhile all about to receive extra support through smaller grants from the District Council.

Two new Firefly boats will soon take to the water on lakes between Hardwick and Stanton Harcourt with the help of a grant worth £4,934 to West Oxfordshire Sailing Club. This will cover 35% of the purchase price. A key aim of buying the new boats is to encourage more young women to take up sailing as active recreation.

£5000 from the District Council will help Langford Cricket Club establish two new nets for training young players from the village and the surrounding area. Sandford St Martin CC has been allocated £1,169 – half the cost of two new sightscreens at its nets. At Standlake, Oxford Downs CC will receive a grant worth £3,530 to pay half the cost of an electronic scoreboard and a shed to store equipment used by junior players.

In the north of the District, Chipping Norton Swifts Football Club hopes to extend its pavilion and drastically improve currently poor changing facilities there. A £5000 grant from West Oxfordshire District Council, equivalent to 10% of the projected cost, will help achieve this.

40% of the cost of repairing and re-instating the presently leaking slate roof at South Leigh Village Hall
will be met by a District Council grant of £1080. At Milton-under-Wychwood, just over a fifth of the cost of improving the toilets at the village hall, to include baby-change facilities and a disabled toilet, will be met through a grant of £12,500.

Councillor Hilary Biles, Cabinet Member for Leisure & Recreation said “It is important that we support our rural communities. West Oxfordshire District Council is committed to providing facilities for youth, sport and village halls.”

“Due to lack of transport in rural areas it is also important we do our best to support our clubs.”

Approval of all the grants is subject to call-in which ends on April 1st. Decisions are not final until then.