Your Tollerton – the Vision
Tollerton is a vibrant community with a rich history and heritage surrounded by farmland with views of open countryside, hills and woodland.
Your Tollerton is about ensuring that residents can access community facilities that meet their needs and support village life.
The vision is for the Methodist Church site to become a community hub for the village centre. This would be in line with the Parish plan objective to “Protect and enhance community facilities and village life” and also in line with the aim in the Tollerton Neighbourhood Plan to “Enhance the village centre”. This would mean plans to extend the existing structure to improve toilets and provide new community café space. There would be a remodelled entrance for pop up / display space and smaller meeting / work spaces for hire. It is hoped to install insulated pitch roofing in keeping with the pub. Finally, plans are to extend the car park and create new landscaping alongside retention of green space around the building.
Why Your Tollerton – how it links to village priorities
The Your Tollerton project is rooted in the priorities of our residents, these can be found in
the Tollerton Parish Plan, which sets out resident’s priorities for living in the village, including:
- Rural characteristics of the village are protected and enhanced including: Open space, views, and the attractiveness of our village
- Village life and sense of community is protected and enhanced including: Village event, community activities and groups
- Existing facilities are protected and enhanced – these are very important and fundamental to village life, including: The school, playgroup, allotments, and meeting rooms; Our unique heritage, the hall, churches, pillboxes and railway.
And through the Tollerton Neighbourhood Plan which sets out land use policies for how residents expect to see Tollerton evolve as a community:
- To celebrate and look after the tranquility, landscape and heritage within our parish whilst keeping community at its heart
- To create a village hub with shops, services and community spaces that the parish can be proud of
- To encourage the delivery of community facilities and services to meet the needs of the parish today and in the future.
Find out more about the Tollerton Parish Plan here or the Tollerton Neighbourhood Plan here.
What is behind the Your Tollerton Project
Post pandemic as part of recovery planning, the parish council looked at existing facilities and engaged with residents about facilities needed in Tollerton for the future. This engagement with residents and businesses identified:
Unmet resident need: residents told the parish council that there were a range of facilities that were not available in the village, predominantly requiring a mixture of venue size and type. These included:
- Larger venue for public events, parties, indoor bouncy castles etc
- Smaller meeting rooms for local groups, home working and business meetings.
- Space for informal socialising, a hot drink and community activity
- More/regular pop up traders which would require improved infrastructure.
Capacity vs demand: Working with local drops to review existing facilities, the Parish Council identified that Tollerton had too many of the same type of venue, which were in part competing with each other for the same user. Whilst the Parish Rooms, Methodist church, St Peter’s Church Centre and Scout Hut have their differences they offered 4 similar sized halls, all with maintenance needs. Collectively the four halls struggled financially, providing more capacity than demand.
Excess demand: In addition to the needs put forward by residents the village community pub regularly turned away potential group bookings for family occasions, parties and particularly wakes. Whilst originally envisaged ans being anble to offer some function space, the successful mix of wet and food sales at the pub has limited capacity to provide for these for residents.