Lease Update

Letter from the Trustees of the Woodmancote Village Hall CIO – Charity Number 1212680

8th August 2026

Dear All,

We promised to update user groups, and despite our best efforts to provide some certainty, unfortunately we are not able to report positive progress. As we all know the current lease expires on 31 October 2026.

At 10:02 on the morning of Saturday 1 August, the Woodmancote Parish Council’s (WPC’s) solicitor sent an email to me (as one of the Trustees of the Woodmancote Village Hall CIO) saying that the WPC would only be willing to grant a new lease of the Village Hall, recreation ground and car park for 20 years excluding the boules court, MUGA, playground, woodland and storage sheds. The draft lease was not attached but the Parish Council solicitor stated that the lease (that was not sent to me) comes subject to 5 conditions:

The 5 Woodmancote Parish Council Conditions

  1. An annual rent be paid to the Parish Council (amount currently under consideration by the Parish Council, who do not meet again until 10 September 2026). Under the current lease the Village Hall pay the Parish Council a peppercorn rent of £1 per annum.
  2. The Village Hall agree to take on a full repairing covenant. This would require the Village Hall to fund things currently paid for by the Parish Council and would require the Village Hall to pay for things such as the Full Structural Upkeep: i.e. to fix the roof, foundations, outside walls, underground drainage etc AND Pre-existing Defects: i.e. to “keep” the Village Hall in repair. This appears to legally force the tenant (the Village Hall) to fix older damage that is already present when/if they take on the new lease AND Insurance Costs. The Village Hall would be required to refund the Parish Council for its insurance costs. Village Hall insurance costs are currently paid for by the Parish Council.
  3. The Village Hall accept all costs in relation to maintenance of the recreation ground, including grass cutting, tree maintenance and what the Parish Council terms ‘similar associated costs’. Currently all these costs are paid for by the Parish Council, to benefit the community as a whole.
  4. To reimburse the Parish Council’s costs for insuring the Village Hall, its public liability etc. The Parish Council currently negotiates and pays for this insurance.
  5. Contribute towards the cost incurred in relation to use of the common parts.

We comment on the above 5 conditions as follows:

  1. No Rent proposed.
  2. There is no suggestion that the cost of making good the pre-existing defects especially those related to the roof, sewerage pipes and asbestos found in the electrical cupboard will be rectified prior to commencement by the Parish Council using the £27000 of reserves that it has set aside from the precept that residents have paid over previous years.
  3. The parish council owns the mower and tools but there is no suggestion that these would also be transferred to the Village Hall.
  4. The insurance cost transfer is effectively additional rent.
  5. No details provided in relation to what common parts they are referring to or the related costs.

As discussed at the user group forum, these Parish Council Conditions could not be met by the Village Hall without a significant increase in hire charges to regular user groups and ad hoc users which in itself may well result in those users either ceasing their activities moving their activities to other venues. Furthermore, the Village Hall is run by volunteers, and this enables us to keep costs down and therefore hire charges. We do not have the expertise to manage the assets the way the Parish Council are now demanding.

The Village Hall Committee have endeavoured to make progress on the new lease for about 18 months. It is our opinion that the terms on offer are not to the benefit of existing user groups, potential hall hirers and most significantly the parish of Woodmancote as a whole.

In essence, the Parish Council are looking to transfer the cost of maintaining this community asset from the 3000 residents of Woodmancote (and paid via a part of the Parish Council precept) to the individual user groups that hire the hall to provide activities that the community wants. Furthermore, the Parish Council are looking to transfer the work involved in maintaining the structure of the hall itself to the trustees of the hall whose sole focus in the past has been to manage the bookings of user groups and to keep the hall clean and tidy.  

The Parish Council’s solicitor gave the Village Hall until 10 August to accept the Parish Council’s proposal. On 3rd August, the Village Hall requested clarification surrounding the 5 comments above from the Parish Council of what was being offered because it was so vague and we resent the proposed heads of terms that had been sent to the Parish Council on 8th March 2026 and had been ignored. We also made the following points:

  • If Woodmancote Village Hall is not going to be the lessee because of the terms above, it would be unfair if the Parish Council then offered the lease to other parties on more favourable terms.
  • Woodmancote Village Hall CIO was formed with the specific objective of providing the hall for the benefit of the residents of Woodmancote over the long term. If the Hall is now going to leased to another party whose interests are related to another primary activity e.g. a club or a group or a business, how will the Parish Council ensure that this community asset is prioritised for the use of the residents of Woodmancote?

Today we have received a further reply from the Parish Council lawyers concluding that as the Village Hall will not agree to their terms they therefore will not continue discussing a lease with us, leaving us with the sad process of vacating the hall on 31st October 2026.

The Immediate Future

Return of the Village Hall to the Landlord (the Parish Council) The current lease requires:

  1. The outside and inside of the Village Hall be decorated in the last 3 months before the end of the lease.
  2. Any external and internal signage or other items it has fixed to the property be removed.
  3. Any damage caused to the property by alterations or removal of fixed items be made good.
  4. All ‘chattels’ belonging to or used by it be removed – which includes all of our equipment and users.
  5. Vacant possession.

The Parish Council have made vague statements about ensuring that user groups can continue to operate in spite of the end of term process above but seem unwilling to make any proper legal commitments. The Village Hall committee of the old charity are personally liable for the debts of the old charity for the time they were trustees. As far as possible, the Village Hall wants to avoid the disruption that will result in removing all of the tenant fixtures/alterations and users equipment before the end of the term and making good any necessary repairs. To do that, we have requested a formal waiver from the end of term obligations to remove all alternations, fixtures and equipment (ours and user groups) and we have asked for a schedule of works the Parish Council require under the lease in addition to the redecoration, floor sanding and resealing and vegetation works around the car park.

If the Parish Council will not provide this within the 14 days requested, we have to work on the basis of what it says in the lease and the Village Hall Committee will very sadly have no choice but to ask the user groups to remove all their property from the Hall by the end of August 2026 and cease operation in the Hall, at least temporarily. This will be essential to enable the required decorations and repair to walls where signage and alterations etc. have to removed.

Should the Parish Council run the Hall themselves, or in some other way, from 1 November 2026, we very much hope that current user groups will be able to return and resume their activities under arrangements made between user groups and the Parish Council or anyone the Parish Council appoint to run the Hall on their behalf.

We know the Parish Council have used some of the £27000 reserves set aside for Village Hall repairs for legal fees and presume they plan to divert those reserves for other purposes or to fund the search for a new tenant OR meet the costs incurred and caused entirely by the Parish Council. Furthermore, if the Parish Council manage to find another tenant on these terms, then it should be reducing the precept to residents to avoid the residents of Woodmancote effectively being charged twice for the hall management i.e. once by the precept and then again through increased hire charges. 

We are very very sad about how this has all unfolded especially after all the efforts that we have all put into the Village Hall and the Woodmancote Community. I am sure I speak for all of us (Keith Smith, Steve Barnes, Sally Ferrers and Judy Barker as well as previous Village Hall trustees) that we never wanted or expected our public service to the Community of Woodmancote to end in this shambolic way.

I attach a background and further details of the negotiations to date for you to have fuller picture so you can decide what to do now in response as it seems the matter is now out of our hands.

Finally, and by no means least, we would like to give the benefit of our experience to whoever follows: for the Village Hall to serve the local community effectively, there has to be a really good relationship between the Parish Council and a Hall Management team related to sharing the maintenance costs of the hall itself. Simultaneous the relationship between the Village Hall and the User Groups to ensure that the hall is managed really efficiently for all groups and hire charges are fair to all parties.

Now that our efforts to serve the local community have been dispensed with in such an unappreciative manner, it will be for the Woodmancote Community to demand that their asset must be run to give priority to ALL segments of the Woodmancote Community and not to prioritise the needs of one user group who would run it for their own benefit and see other users as a way of subsidising their own activities.

From a personal perspective, I have served Woodmancote as Parish Councillor from 2018 to 2025 and as Trustee of the Village Hall from Spring 2025 until now and I regret to say that the way this process has been derailed (hopefully not to the detriment of the community) has left a very sour taste in my mouth and I will not be volunteering any more of my time to the community for the foreseeable future.

Kind regards,

James Nicholson-Smith

Background

In 2023 and 2024, the Parish Council passed resolutions to provide £5000 of grant funding to Woodmancote Village Hall to enable it to modernise its legal structure to enable it to operate more efficiently and attract new trustees that had been prevented from doing so because of the unlimited liability attached to the current charity set up and the conflicts of interest between users groups and the Village hall team that had made decision making unmanageable. At the same time, it was agreed to bring forward the renewal of the lease for the hall on similar terms but to update the repairing commitments to what had become the established obligations of the parties.

Given, the lease was designed to be very low cost for the hall management to enable hire charges to remain low and activity to be high, the lease would be a copy of the old lease but update the legal references and avoid external legal fees to save both taxpayer and charity money. In Summer 2025, the Parish Council decided to commission external lawyers to prepare a lease. In August 2025, that 52-page draft was sent to the Village Hall.

At the end of August 2025, and under the Chairmanship of Cllr Nigel Adcock, the whole project was derailed, which resulted in 4 of the most experienced and active Councillors resigning from the Parish Council and raising formal complaints with the monitoring officer.

Negotiations to date

Please note that as per our conversation and minutes of the last user group forum, we were asked at the beginning of the year if Woodmancote Village Hall CIO would be willing to enter into a full repairing lease for the recreational field and the hall itself although there could have been an option to carve out the field. We tried to make this work and offered to agree heads of terms which would require the Parish Council to make good all defects prior to commencement or carve out anything that was defective. Unfortunately, the Parish Council was unwilling to do this and instead insisted on each side appointing their own surveyors (at a cost of circa £3500 plus VAT each) with no pre-agreement of renewal terms in principle. As trustees, we felt that this expense was not justifiable and the costs would then extend to lawyers of probably another £2500 plus VAT. Before we would know it, we would have spent £10k and so would have the Parish Council.

As you know, the Parish Council have been totally unwilling to have any conversations about the renewal and delegated all responsibility to their consultant clerk, Gill Jennings. All conversations by the Parish Council have been held in private so that the community has been kept in the dark as much as we are. It is fair to say that trust and mutual respect have been at an all-time low since Autumn 2025 despite our efforts to clear the air and find a way forward.

At the last User Group forum, we explained that after a lengthy deliberation, the trustees decided that its fundamental purpose was to manage the hiring of hall from the user perspective and it was not the purpose of the charity to manage the asset itself in terms of the structure nor its fixtures and fittings and service media. As volunteers this was not a skill set, we had nor did we have the time to do this. We also felt that the current arrangements shared the cost of above maintenance across all residents of Woodmancote via the precept rather than the cost of the structure being recharged to the user groups through increased hire charges. As you know, in May we informed the Parish Council that the CIO will not enter into a full repairing lease and if that is what the Parish Council now wants then they will need to find another tenant.

After 2 months of chasing a reply, we finally received the 3 line email from the Parish Council’s lawyers HCR Law on 1st August 2026 which basically confirmed that there will be no ongoing relationship beyond the expiry of the current lease term and the Parish Council will look to operate the Hall on a temporary basis themselves and do not appear to have any alternative management team ready to take over.

As all the previous communications suggest that Woodmancote Village Hall Committee would not be operating the hall beyond 31st October 2026, we requested clarification of the status for users. There reply is below:

Re your point 1 the Council has not had sight of the survey and will need to consider any tenant dilapidations which are flagged up in that report. I do not think the user groups need to be troubled about this.

Re your point 2 If the CIO does not wish to take up the Lease offer then the Council would want to ensure that bookings are honoured and usage maintained. In that case the Council would have to step in to temporarily administer the running of the hall but this will require the cooperation of the WVHC to facilitate a smooth handover and we would set up a meeting with you to discuss any annual contracts, payments in advance, utilities, hallmaster, staffing etc.  

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the law, when the tenant comes to the expiry of the lease there are legal obligations in the lease that the departing tenant must follow and if they don’t, they will be liable to be charged for the costs of the landlord meeting those obligations. These are called dilapidation liabilities. Given that the old trust is unincorporated, that places a heavy financial burden on any individual trustee because they effectively have unlimited personal liability. The reason for mentioning this is because it is naïve of the Parish Council to state that for the tenant to avoid dilapidations liabilities, that this does not impact user groups.

In order for Woodmancote Village Hall to facilitate the smooth transition that the Parish Council now seems to want, we have asked the Parish Council to set out a schedule of work in the next 14 days detailing what they want us to do between now and the end of the term to meet our obligations. Furthermore, where that work would prevent us from continuing to provide the hall to user groups, the Parish Council will need to provide us with a formal legal waiver of any related obligations e.g. to leave the hall empty and with vacant possession. If these are not forthcoming, then we are very very very sorry to say that we will be closing the Hall at the end of August 2026 to carry out all the works we think will be required under the lease and we will have to ask all User Groups to remove all of their equipment from the hall by then.

Given the reply we have just received from the Parish Council we have no confidence that we will receive either.

James Nicholson-Smith:

On behalf of the Trustees