are a sub-committee
of the Rayne Village Hall & Playing
Fields Committee in the village of Rayne , near Braintree Essex.
It was set up by parents of young children in Rayne, to raise the
money needed to refurbish the children’s
playground.
We are aiming to deliver a safe, stimulating playground for the
children to play and socially interact, which is accessible to
all. We will be continuing on from the sterling work completed
by previous committee who spent many hours working to improve the
playground over a decade ago.
The existing playground was built around
the time of the village hall in the early 1950’s. Over
the years equipment has been added and removed to give the children
of the village the best playground possible. The last major change
was over 10 years ago when safety matting and a new swing, slide,
roundabout, climbing frame and springer were installed.
The playground equipment is installed on a grass area, which requires
high maintenance and gets very muddy during winter. Added to the
fact that the roundabout was condemned and removed and the ROSPA
safety report stated that the equipment was nearing the end of
its life, sparked a small group of parents to start looking into
what could be done.
The first port of call was the Parish Council,
but for the Parish Council to be able to fund the type of project
being discussed (a possible £110,000 redevelopment), the
potential increase in council tax for the village would have been
prohibitive. Therefore other ways of funding had to be found.
The obvious place to look at for grant funding
was the Big Lottery
Fund. This
was a daunting prospect as we had all heard how hard it was to
get a grant from this source. However, you have to be in it to
win it, so we decided to start the application process in January
2005.
After our initial panic over a 45 page application
form we started to complete the sections, none of us knew it
would take over 3 months of hard work to get all the sections
completed and ready for submission! The application, for funding
of around £120,000
- which was over two inches thick - was sent to the Big Lottery
Fund at the end of March 2005 and we waited.
 Click
here for PDF of Image
By this time we had outline designs from
five different playground manufacturers; Playdale, Wickstead,
Monster Play, SMP and AS&A.
The initial response from the Lottery was very favourable but they
asked the group to provide a re-design at a lower cost, to improve
our chances of a successful bid. We then set to work to a lower
cost design that would cost £70,000.
 Click
here for PDF of Image
This was submitted in June 2005 and with each passing month, the
Big Lottery Fund asked for further information and clarification
of different aspects of the project. Our hopes were starting to
be raised, and we reached the last stage in November 2005 when
our application was to go before the board of the Big Lottery Fund
and were told that we would hear the decision by 15th December
2005.
During this time, we as a group had been
busy fund raising within the community,
to acheive the target of £7,000 that the Big Lottery Fund
had asked us to undertake to raise by ourselves. With the help
of the people of the village by December 2005 we had reached our
target!!!
However, there are still some further costs
that need to be met and to this end, there are another two events
planned for 2006. We are hoping to raise a further £3,000
from these events to achieve this, to have the park of our dreams!
In early December 2005, we were notified
by the Rural Community Council
of Essex that
PARK had been chosen as a finalist for the above award for fund
raising within the local community. We were shocked, and on the
night we travelled to Great Dunmow for the presentation evening.
The award was counted down in prizes, from achievement awards through
to 3rd place (we nearly got up when this was announced, but no
it was not us!) 2nd place came and went, it then hit us that we
had been awarded 1st place and a cheque for £250! Dumfounded,
gob smacked, shocked, words could not describe how we felt, we
could not believe it !
After a few drinks in celebration that night,
we all went about our business the next morning with a smile on
our faces and some trepidation knowing the Big Lottery Fund decision
was just ten days away.
At around 10:30, Pip took a phone call from
the Lottery and her first thoughts were “What else do they need now”, but
it was not another request for information, we had the decision
we had been waiting for. PARK had been awarded the funding we had
bid for - a whopping £63,000.!!! The news was swiftly passed
around the committee with one member stopping the bus she was on
after screaming on hearing the news!
That night was a celebration, a large number of bottles of champagne
were drunk and there were a few sore heads in the morning.
We had done it!!
As mentioned above, PARK still needs to
raise a final £3,000
to complete the project, which includes a further two pieces of
equipment, Astroturf (to get rid of all the grass) and some fencing.
See our planned events page for
further details of how you can try your luck when Las Vegas comes
to Rayne in March, and how you could help solve a murder in May...
.
Declaration of the rights
of the child, United Nations 1979
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