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A Happy New Year to you and all the best for 2022.
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Given the COVID situation there are no plans for a shed meeting tomorrow but John and I will be at the shed to try and do some more work on the internal lining which is nearing completion. Any member is welcome to come and have a look but there will be no formal meeting and only three inside the container at any one time so check the weather. Alistair Mckenzie is also busy painting and decorating inside the scout hall conference room but Graham has now to isolate again with the family testing positive for covid. Keith was unable to get his op because of COVID and is also isolating. It never ends and we are a long way from getting back to even near normal. Zoom will be available as usual, details on the bottom of this notes. and on a more positive note I hope Jack saw the New Year in with more clarity after his op. and is able to read the notes!
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I received a request this week for the completion report on our £5000.00 community Grant Award - CGF Report - NP7/26/19 Pentlands Men's Shed. This was not unexpected being over two years late in the submission so I sent a quick holding reply to ward off any adverse repercussions and received a favourable response as follows:- (Names and addresses omitted)
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My reply:-***We are well on the way to completing our new 'shed' having been delayed at every turn by covid and then the scarcity of materials and a huge escalation in the price of containers. Eventually we obtained a free derelict container and have almost completed refurbishing it ourselves in order to stay within budget. If you are happy to wait until say the end of March I will hopefully be able to give you a full account by then as our aim is to have it useable by then, covid permitting. If you wish to have an account of spend to date I will be happy to provide that by the end of this month as I expect to be trying to purchase the rest of the materials by then having secured insurance for the build on making it wind and water tight early December. Please let me know either way and I'll get to it and thanks for your patience. I do however confirm that all of the Grant has been spent on materials and apart from the groundworks all labour has been provided free over the two years since we started the project.***
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I received the following response:- ***Can you forward the spend to date as soon as you’re able, then once the whole project is complete can you forward the project report? If you could forward this information to my colleague as I won’t be working with community grants for the foreseeable future. Glad it’s going well. ***
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On the basis of the above I’ve started to prepare the completion report to date and will use their pro forma already supplied. I’ll work with Lyall and Iain on this but here’s my take on how we have complied with the use of ‘their’ monies. Confidential to members please but you do need to be aware of how we spend shed monies and hopefully understand that the shed is run on a tight budget! Throughout my career I’ve been well versed in how to spend other peoples’ money and then to account for it with minimal but factual detail so I hope that you agree with the following summary!
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Shed costings re Application for funding grant from Community Grant Fund
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The amount requested was £5000.00 within a total project cost of £8500.00. We were awarded the full amount of £5000.00 requested at a meeting attended by Jim and myself.
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Additional funds were specified as coming from other awards, donations, and using shed member labour at no cost to project. (I bet some of you are regretting signing up for that!)
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Application breakdown of costs was £1k for site clearance, £5k for container, £1k for fitting out, £1k for safe walkway and environmental aspects of landscaping, and £500 for contingencies making up the total of £8500.00 excluding in house labour costs.
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it was not possible, due to COVID to continue to planned timescale or to purchase a refurbished container of size required within the estimates provided and our plan B came into operation to keep the project going and remain within budget.
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Plan B comprised clearing of site and refurbishing a derelict container using member labour wherever possible. This work is progressing well and cost escalations have been contained.
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Clearing site £900.00, delivery of container and skip hire £567, building and refurbishing materials £3898, making a total of £5365.
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So in the terms of the award we can legitimately say, and provide receipts for, £5365 which discharges our obligation to document and clear the award monies and demonstrates that we are well on the way to achieving our project within the project estimates.
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The sums above do not include all of the expenditure we have made to date on the project. For example none of the costs for rhones, incidental materials and the buildings and shed insurance are included here. However between donations and sales of expertise and labour to the community on a non commercial basis I’m confident we are still within our £8500 budget for a working shed so long as our labour costs remain at zero. I hope this is the case Lyall!! In any event we are old enough and knowledgeable enough to cut our cloth to suit.
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If we can all agree that this is a fair reflection of our efforts to date I will work with Lyall and Iain to fill in the grant application completion form with receipts to cover the above within the next week or so and thus discharge our interim obligations to the community fund and when the project is completed we will revert with a full completion statement. Let me know by a simple yes or no to this email please and with a majority yes we’ll go forward with the next step.
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All of the above has taxed my brain for now so I’m going to end here and hopefully it won’t be too long before we can meet up as planned, whatever the weather!
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