The Fool on the Hill: The Hall Fees Issue

Auchencairn has a village hall. It's one of the most significant community assets the village has. It's a solidly built stone building on the south side of the Square that isn't a square, in the centre of the village. Its primary purpose, at least as it's been used over my lifetime, is as a general purpose venue for events.

These events have included

1. Polling place for elections;
2. General meetings and consultations of the community;
3. Social events, especially dances, ceilidhs and discos;
4. Meetings of various committees and societies;
5. The annual produce show;
6. Art exhibitions;
7. The school play;
8. A youth club (sadly, not for many years);
9. Amateur theatricals (again, not for many years);
10. A pop-up pub.

One thing that should be said clearly: the hall exists to serve the villagers, not the other way around. It's not used every day, by any means; and although there is not a demand for daily events, days on which it is not being used, it's not serving the villagers.

At a meeting on thirteenth November, the Community Council, of which I am now chair, will discuss the issue of fees for use of the hall. These are my thoughts in advance of that meeting. The meeting will take place as seven in the evening, and members of the community are entitled to attend.

Social context

Auchencairn is a village with a population of a few hundred — in the 1970s it was about 250 people, it's not greatly different now, although it may be a few more. Over the past forty years, the private housing in the village has been mainly bought up by incomers paying prices above what wages earned in the local labour market will sustain, leading to a highly stratified community in which local people live mainly

1. On outlying farms, which are still mainly in the hands of local families;
2. In social housing, effectively a bantustan on the north side of burn; or
3. In informal structures such as huts and old vans and caravans.

It should be said that there are also incomers living in informal structures; overall, there are between thirty and forty people living in informal structures, these days mainly at Standingstone, making over 10% of the village population.

Informal dwellings are not a new phenomenon in the village; in my childhood there were families living in caravans and in ruinous buildings. But as the price of legal housing has risen, people on local incomes who cannot access social housing have been forced either into informal accommodation or out of the village altogether.

This skew between a richer, mainly incomer, population in owner-occupied housing in the core of the village and a poorer population in social housing and informal dwellings on the periphery is also a skew of age. There are very few primary school age children in owner-occupier housing on either Main Street or Church Road. There are very few buildings owned by second generation villagers in the village core.

There are inevitably tensions across this social divide, and it seems to me that it is important for not to aggravate these tensions.

Note that nothing in this argument makes people moving into an area and buying housing at prices they can afford (but that local people cannot) 'bad people'. They are doing something which capitalism allows them to do — and which, if wealth were more evenly distributed, would be benign. Auchencairn is a particularly beautiful place. It is reasonable to wish to live in a particularly beautiful place. But our job, as Community Councillors, must be to maintain community cohesion and social viability in the community for which we are responsible, and we have to understand and to face the fact that this is an issue.

Lifestyle choice

I've heard it said that living in informal accommodation is 'a lifestyle choice.' There's a limited amount of truth in that. The truth is that, if you earn your living in the local economy, you have no inherited wealth, and you don't qualify for social housing, your choice is to move away or live in an informal structure. Yes, it's a choice. Of the people who were young in this village when I was young in this village, those who remain are those who inherited farms, those who had social housing, Raymond Douglas who worked most of his life on Torr, and me. Everyone else has gone.

Yes, you can call it a 'lifestyle choice'. Or you can call it ethnic cleansing. Both are true.

Sustainability

A number of key institutions of the village depend on a proportion of people of working — and child-rearing — age remaining in the village. The school is obviously one.

As I documented in The Minimum Viable Village, it takes about 268 people of working age to sustain a school of 35 pupils, and that in an idealised Scottish village, with an average holding size of 101 hectares, agriculture could employ only about 39 of those people. But Auchencairn is not an idealised Scottish village. Our holdings, excluding Standingstone, are typically much larger than 101 hectares; and we don't have affordable housing for 268 people of working age. So without the technically homeless population, Auchencairn could not sustain a school.

It also probably could not sustain a shop. A large proportion of those working or volunteering in the shop are either living in informal accommodation, or living outwith the village altogether.

Beyond that, a community with a high proportion of elderly people needs services such as health and social care, which need to be provided by younger people and which currently are not well paid. To be able to provide those services to our ageing population, we need younger economically active people, and they need somewhere to live.

Institutional Context

The Hall doesn't belong to the Community Council, which, because politicians are wary of too much grass roots power, is allowed to do very little. Consequently it belongs to a 'Hall Committee', which is (as I understand it) an unencorporated body which happens to share members with the Community Council. Neither the Community Council nor the Hall Committee are empowered to take on debt, and thus neither can run at a loss. Therefore, the hall cannot run at a loss.

Therefore, if some events are to be allowed to use the hall at below cost, either significant other events must be charged substantially above cost, or we must do systematic fund raising for the hall.

Argument for subsidising

As is clear from the argument above, this is a village with substantial disparities of both wealth and income. It needs to be said, too, that those who have substantial wealth do not necessarily also have substantial income; for example some farm incomes are said to be under severe stress — I don't know whether this includes farms in Auchencairn's hinterland, but I certainly don't know that it doesn't.

But also, retired people who have invested their wealth in a nice house on Main Street do not necessarily also have a fat pension. Again, I don't know of any specific cases, but neither should I; people are ashamed of poverty. I do know for certain that there have been people in the village in the recent past with no income at all, and with no food at all except for food parcels provided by Citizens' Advice in Castle Douglas. Beyond that, there are a substantial number of people who cannot afford housing at all. Yes, some of the people living in informal accommodation might possibly be able to afford private rental accommodation, but many certainly could not.

And finally, people with severe mental health problems frequently fall through the social security net.

If we impose flat charges for all events in the hall, it will have a much higher impact on the poor than on the wealthy. It will inevitably tend to exclude the poorer members of the village from events in the hall.

That's OK if we see the village poor as deserving of their poverty, and thus unworthy of aid. And yes, of course it's true that many of the people who are abjectly poor in Scotland today are abjectly poor because their lives are chaotic, either because of mental illness of because of addiction to alcohol or drugs. Perhaps you do feel no empathy, no solidarity, for such people. There's no duty on you to do so.

It's also OK if your vision of Auchencairn's future is of a comfortable retirement community for relatively wealthy incomers, from which the embarrassing locals ought to be cleansed. But that's not my vision. I hope that what we're seeking to build is a cohesive community which cares for and supports all of its members in their needs.

For these reasons I'm opposed to a flat hourly fee for all events; I'm opposed to the concept of a 'minimum donation' for entry into an event. The first of these things filters potential event organisers by their ability to stand the loss of that fee; the second filters event participants by their ability to pay that 'minimum donation'. Of course if you don't specify a 'minimum donation', some people who you may believe could reasonably afford to pay a reasonable amount may choose not to do so; but it does not seem that it should be for us as a community council to be means-testing our villagers. We should trust that the overwhelming majority of those who can afford to, will donate generously.

Options for fundraising

Pop-up pub

We have had 'pop-up pub' events in the hall, which are widely viewed as having been successful. However, we don't currently have a licence to sell alcohol in the hall, and there's no permanent bar fixture and currently nowhere that stock for a bar could be securely stored. Consequently, these are currently 'bring your own bottle' events, and there's not a lot of profit.

A licence could be applied for; secure storage could be provided, perhaps in the old toilet block. A monthly or fortnightly pub night could raise a substantial amount of income for the hall, although it would require volunteers to run it, and it would have some capital outlay before it could become fully established.

Discos/Ceilidhs/Dance nights

In my youth, discos were a pretty regular event in the hall, run mainly by Norman Maxwell, and mainly to provide funding for the youth club. They were popular events, engaged the younger people of the village, and raised a fair bit of money. We've a couple of people in the village just now who regularly DJ at parties and festivals, and who could be approached to run discos.

Ceilidhs have also been very popular over the years, and again we have many musicians in the village who might be prevailed upon to provide music.

I'm not (necessarily) suggesting that people should volunteer for this; there should be enough profit in such an event that the performers could be paid a small fee.

Again, there may be some cost implications. Acoustics in the hall are poor. We used to have heavy curtains which absorbed some of the sound; I've been told it's possible that these are still stored under the stage but I have not investigated.

Objections

There have certainly, in the past, been objections from people living around the Square to too much noise too late at night. Obviously, we would need to consult with people living around the Square, and to set appropriate closing hours.

Events for which fees ought not to be charged

In what follows, by 'open event', I mean any event which is open to the public.

Open events for children

This matter has become an issue because of two events:

1. The Halloween Party, which has been a regular event for the children of the village in recent years, and which is run by volunteers;
2. The School Play.

Both of these are events for children. It is invidious and damaging if some children are seen to be excluded from events because their parents cannot pay a given fee. It doesn't seem unreasonable that the village should from time to time — for example, at Halloween, or at Christmas — provide a free event for its children. It should certainly be incumbent on us, if open events for children are being held on our premises, that no child should be excluded because of inability to pay.

Open events which ask attendees only for a donation for hall costs

However, I would argue further that, generally, if the only money that attendees are being asked for on entering an open event is a donation to hall funds, then generally that should be accepted.

Special circumstances

The Hall Committee should be prepared to hear arguments that fees should be waved for other events in exceptional circumstances.

Events for which I believe fees should be charged

If someone is holding an invitation only party, or is seeking to make a profit for themselves or raise funds for their organisation from an event, it seems reasonable that a fee should be charged.

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