TEN YEARS AGO Friday May 11, 2012

Tense wait for decision on town hall lottery bid

The battle to save the town hall has moved to a critical stage this week as an application for a grant of nearly £1 million was submitted to the Big Lottery Fund.

A month ago, the Courier reported that, without urgent renovation, the town hall risked deteriorating and being permanently lost as an asset to the community.

If the application proves successful, its future should be assured as the lottery money would make up the bulk of the £1.3 million total cost.

But with decisions from Big Lottery usually taking around six weeks to arrive, and no middle ground between a straight forward ‘yes or no’, the wait will be a nervous one.

Eric Spence, consultant on the town hall project, who prepared the documents for the application, said he was optimistic.

‘We think we have got a strong case,’ he said. ‘There’s obviously a great need for the town hall in the community.

‘But even if we don’t get the lottery funding, it won’t be the end of the world. If it didn’t come about, we would have to look at multi-agency funding.’

In 2012: Owen Reid, Millar Irwin, Hannah Black and Kelsey Graham were among pupils from Castlehill Primary School who went out on a clean-up. Accompanied by teachers and parents, they collected litter from the Meadows Playing Fields and Ralston Road areas around the school.