The none-public side of the South Ward - this is the equipment in one of the rooms in the Assembly Hall which is something to do with the water system for the Blue Pool.

As of today (29th January 2024), the Assembly Hall is running for immediate day by day events surprisingly well. Both of our deputy managers, who have done a great deal for the hall and have put in a lot of heart, are no longer routinely available and other staff are standing in. However, I'm very conscious that they were employed mostly for normal office hours and not evenings and weekends and the stand-in should be considered short term unless they wish to carry on with "permanent shifts". They also have other jobs to do as well; each different and this is a general comment.

With this staff change, it's a miracle that only one event has had to be postponed - yesterday's record fair. The stall holders on the Town Hall books were let know, I understand, in good time and the posters updated to a new date - 25th February. In hindsight, more could have been done to let people know online and we could have had a notice of postponement prominently displayed at the hall. Many *were* reached, but my apologies to those who turned up having had it in their diaries for a while, or seen it in the general leaflet for the winter. With 5000 of those distributed, and the whole intent being to attract people, there are going to be a few who turned up. The real solution is Do Not Cancel

Looking ahead to the next few weeks, a handful of reliable long-standing and new volunteers are helping out. You'll see me or two or three others checking tickets and helping people get seated as you arrive for tributes like "Three Kings" or "Majesty", or for the "Kast off Kinks" - not a tribute, but the originals. And we have a good team of occasional paid bar staff who know the hall. It's also the winter, so the slack season for out outdoor amenities team. But - come the Easter holidays (and Easter is early this year) the current running system will become strained unless updated.

Those of you who attended the job fair a week ago will have seen Melksham Town Council there; the Town Council is looking for appropriate people to pick their vacant posts - it would be obvious (and I believe it is likely the plan) to let people move internally in line with their skills, career goals and personal lives / satisfaction and then fill the holes, and the MTC appearance at the job fair confirms a search in public. The public calendar also indicates an extra staffing committee meeting tonight - details hidden even from all councillors except those on the committee - but perhaps that's an indication of change.

So for the medium term - we need to be looking at hall management including booking ahead, maintenance, stock ordering, doing the accounts, future marketing and publicity, and so on. This is where a new appropriate person can come in and pick up the role as well as taking back many of those evening and weekend shifts that some of the others find themselves doing all the time at present, rather than just from time to time. How the role is filled / who is selected and what their background is will have an influence on how others fit around.

The longer term question - what about that equipment in the headline picture and the future of both the Assembly Hall and the Blue Pool building? Firstly, there is an overwhelming desire for the facilities to continue to be provided here. Whatever may be said in private by some, most councillors acknowledge that the public (their voters next year) do not want to see the facilities lost. There is also an understanding that leaving an Assembly Hall with minimum maintenance, and with an attached and undetermined Blue Pool building attached (and integrate services, you note) is not an option. That said, the building maintenance fund that was in the draft budget - £70,000 across the estate - was stripped out 10 days ago in order to help keep the precept rise below inflation and just about the lowest of any town around by quite some margin. So - what now?

For the next couple of months, the Town Council will do nothing long term as it deals with immediate issues of running the Assembly Hall and other services. And while it fills posts and gets new resources active to pick up the short and medium term operation. The plan is for that to release Melksham Town Council management staff to oversee the major project of planning and implementing our Assembly Hall future.

I am relieved to see the thought of a way ahead. I am unclear as to the exact staffing and mechanism of this, I am aware of the lack of funding in the budget for it, and I regret elements of messing people around asking for ideas and quotes for work that are on hold until the spring. It's good to see the repairs to the changing rooms being done - my fingers are crossed that the roof repairs to stop the leaks (and in this year's budget) are going to be completed in such a way that the new works are not damaged, and indeed that other damage through water ingress and lack of basic maintenance is stopped.

So - what for Friends of Melksham Assembly Hall? In the short term, we are just that - promoting the events, helping out where we can. Looking at the longer term, we continue to learn as we have done over the past year, and continue to float ideas as we continue to support the long term meeting of needs - of the current users, of people who do not use the hall because it does not provide what it could for them, and of the team that's running it.

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