During 2023 we have spoken to the young people at the group over what changes they would like to see happen at the scout hall to make it more sustainable and a nice environment to work. There main concerns were how cold it can get in the winter, near by anti social behaviour and energy efficiency. This information has been fed back to the Scout Groups Executive Committee which has resulted in below.

South Molton Scout Group Executive Committee have set out on a 5 year improvement plan for the Scout Hall in South Molton starting January 2024. There are some big and little changes we would like to make to the hall as the Scout Hall was originally built back in the 70’s.

• Move the hall entrance and exit around to the Central Park entrance to make better use of the disabled facilities, along with a safer route in an out of the building for users rather than using the steep steps at the current entrance which especially during winter can become very icy.
• Also in moving the entrance around to Central Park we hope that the anti social behaviour in the park might decrease. Plus opens up the opportunity for more hall hires due to better disabled access.
• Improve the lighting on the hall in Central Park so that parents, young people and disabled users can see their route to the hall when it is dark outside.
• New signage out next to the back door of the hall to advertise the scout group / hall.
• Carry out an Asbestos Survey of the Scout Hall.
• At present the loft space has little or no insulation. We would like to add insulation up in the loft space to approx 300mm to help keep some warmth in the building.
• Add pipe lagging around the water pipes in the toilets and kitchen of the hall to prevent any frozen pipes.
• Replace the old 3mm single glassed windows around the hall with newer double glazed windows.
• Replace the old drafty wooden entrance door and fire exit door with newer doors. Swapping the doors around at the same time for the change of access route.
• Contra vision on the new entrance door advertising the group.
• Look at the acoustics of the hall as it is currently as it is currently very bad. This sometimes puts young people off attending as it can be very loud in there at times.
• Replacing alot of the old lights in the hall for LED equivalents to improve energy efficiency.
• Replacing the old heater that currently heats the hall with a more efficient heater.
• And finally at the bottom of the list replacing the hall flooring adding in some insulation as the old block flooring keeps lifting and coming to bits.

The Executive committee have broken this down into 6 stages of priority depending on how fundraising and sourcing money goes over the next 5 years.

This project will take a lot of fundraising to complete if you would like to donate or help out out with a fundraiser please do contact us at smscouts@outlook.com

Each section (Beavers, Cubs and Scouts) has been tasked with trying to organise at lease 2 fundraisers a year to help with this.