NEW rules governing the hire of Petersfield Town Council's public halls have angered the groups who use them. At the Avenue Pavilion and Sheet Village Hall users' meeting with councillors on Tuesday night they accused the council of taking the interest from damage deposits locked away for long periods in its balance accounts. The hall users were outraged at the new rules, which require all hirers to pay £150 damage deposits. In the past, they said, the deposits were only paid by those hiring the halls for one-off occasions. Groups who had regular bookings were not charged. But all that is about to change on April 1. Petersfield Town Council public halls committee has sent a letter to all hirers of the two halls saying they will be required to pay damage deposits of £150 from next month. And at the meeting on Tuesday night, chairman Paul Molloy outlined the costs of running the two halls. He said last year the overall cost of Sheet Village Hall was just over £11,000 and the income was just under £10,000, giving a deficit of around £1,300. Expenditure at the Avenue Pavilion was £13,332 with income of £13,568 which gave the town council a small profit of £236. But at the Festival Hall it was a different story, with expenditure of £141,000 and income of only £49,225, leaving a £91,827 hole to plug. Mr Molloy told the meeting: "It became clear to us that an imbalance had crept into the management of the halls and we were in danger of not managing them in a good professional manner." He said staff and councillors had taken a long hard look at the running of the halls, and in particular the situation with public liability insurance and the damage deposit charges. "We discovered that little deals had been struck up over the years and it was a nightmare for the staff. So we decided to standardise everything so that every user of the halls was on the same terms, paying the same amount of money," he said. Councillors decided that deposits should be paid "right across the board", but had to call in Zurich, their insurers, to discuss public liability. "We discovered that £5m was the standard throughout the country and £3m was the absolute minimum," he said. But some groups were unable to get liability between £2m and £5m and this, said Mr Molloy, was unfair on the smaller organisations. He said the committee had now decided to discuss public liability again in a bid to reduce the sum to £2m for the users of Sheet hall and the Avenue Pavilion. But Anne Curtis, who runs keep fit classes in Sheet Village Hall, said she was very unhappy about having to pay a £150 damage deposit. "I can't see how you can have a deposit of £150 for someone who hires the hall every week," she said. "To me it's extortionate. I have been here for 15 years. If I go on for another 10, you will have my money all that time. It's not so bad for a big organisation, but this is my own personal money that the town council has in its bank account." "I hire other halls as well, and I don't have to do this anywhere else," she told the meeting. Ann Mattingly, speaking for Sheet WI, said the group had been using the hall for 70 years and hoped to carry on hiring it. But she said she was unhappy about the damage deposit, which she believed presented difficulty for regular users. She said that in theory groups were entitled to have their deposits back the day after their hire. But if the deposits were ring-fenced by the council they could work out the interest and pay organisations a cheque at the end of the year. Before the meeting Clifford Ball, treasurer of the Sheet Horticultural Society, told The Herald he was "very angry" about the new charge. "We are a small society and the loss of interest on £150 to us is a serious matter, and I think the town council could manage without it," he said. Petersfield mayor Vaughan Clarke said he believed councillors should think again. "Theoretically if a group starts in l935 and goes on for many years, it wouldn't get its money back until it folded and the council has got its cheque for years and years. There is a problem here and it may be wise to look at this again." He suggested that the WI should consult other branches across the country to see how they coped with damage deposits.
