How Levens Community Project came about

In 1968 a plan was drawn with a view to building a new village hall at the playing fields but because of reasons unknown this never materialised.

In 1989 another plan by the same architect was drafted to extend the Institute but again no action was taken.

In 1997 the Institute management committee sent out a questionnaire to the village asking the question, do you want a new village hall? The results were 288 to35 and a number of comments in favour of a new hall.

In 2008 the parish plan showed that 95% of the 75% who returned the questionnaire wanted a new hall but at that time there was no site.

In 2009 Nick Hayhurst, the then planning officer visited Levens and a number of sites and found the recycling site the best and only realistic site for a village hall. He also commented that the planners would not allow any further expansion of the original footprint of the institute due to parking issues and close proximity to existing houses. . This information was confirmed by letter to the Parish Council.

In 2010 the then village hall committee who consisted of only institute committee members invited the Parish Council to co-opt two members onto their committee as the PC owned the recycling site.

We had 3 main tasks. Firstly, we needed to register the site and the rest of the Parish land, to gain Absolute Title. This proved to be a little difficult as no deeds are available for these pieces of land. Secondly, we needed to talk with architects to check on suitability of the site both for size and topography to build a village hall. Thirdly, we needed to explore funding.

In 2013, a new committee was formed, The Levens Community Project Committee, to investigate building a new village hall on the Quarry Site.