Old River Lane: Campaigners ask town council to splash out to help save Water Lane Hall from demolition
Campaigners fighting to save a 108-year-old community hall from demolition as part of the Old River Lane scheme in Bishop's Stortford have asked the town council to help save it – including making a grant or loan to buy it.
They want the nine members – seven Conservatives and two Liberal Democrats – of the 17-strong town council who also sit on East Herts Council (EHC) to use their influence with the district authority to secure Water Lane United Reformed Church Hall's future for continued use by arts and community groups. Both councils are controlled by the Tories.
EHC's development partner Cityheart wants to knock down the hall, three nearby houses and the council's Charringtons House office block to make way for a new public square, pedestrian-friendly streets, 150 homes, 75 "extra care" dwellings, shops, offices and a landmark £15.5m cinema-led arts centre, which has been downgraded from a £30m centre with a 544-seat theatre in the original scheme after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the council's finances.
The town council has already told EHC that Cityheart's outline planning application – which fixes the layout and access for the ORL site but gives no certainty about key elements like the arts centre – should be refused permission and be resubmitted in a form that details exactly what will be delivered.
In 2019, EHC bought Water Lane URC Hall – built in 1915 as a Sunday school – for £975,000 to transfer to Cityheart to be bulldozed to give Waitrose 50 parking spaces it will lose as part of the ORL project. The council re-leased it to the URC to manage for the time being, but the church is keen to give up this burden.
Last September 2022, community body Bishop’s Stortford Civic Federation (BSCF) secured the hall's registration as an asset of community value (ACV), which imposes a six-month pause on any sale to give the local community a chance to submit an offer to buy it.
The civic federation has invoked this moratorium and said it wishes to make a bid by March 23. A memorandum of understanding has been agreed between BSCF and Community Initiative (Bishop's Stortford) Trust, a registered charity established in 2005, to take ownership should a bid and funding be successful.
However, EHC, as the hall's owner, does not have to accept the offer.
The Friends of Water Lane Hall, which says it supports EHC's strategic objective to develop the ORL site, is an informal group which represents arts groups in the town, Bishop’s Stortford Arts Forum and community businesses.
In a letter to mayor Cllr Dave Anderson and town council leader Cllr John Wyllie on Monday February 13, the group asked for the town council’s support in securing the future of the building, which is home to the monthly Laughing Bishops Comedy Club and used by a wide range of groups, from kids to karate and pensioners to Pilates.
It said: "As you know, there is fierce objection to loss of the hall. We are aware that the town council planning committee unanimously objected to the applications for demolition and for outline planning permission to use the site for supermarket parking."
The group asked the town council for five things:
- Would it resolve to support in principle the retention and reuse of Water Lane Hall, as soon as possible?
- Are town councillors willing to use their influence, in the interests of the town, to urge the district council and Cityheart to save the hall, while at the same time recognising the need to progress a more publicly acceptable strategy for the ORL site?
- Would members contribute a message of support to a business plan, that is currently being prepared, for long-term arts and community use of the hall, complementary to South Mill Arts?
- Would members and the chief executive [James Parker[ consider committing to a proposal for a grant or long-term loan, to fund the purchase of the property, in whole or in part?
- What can members propose to enable retention and reuse of the hall?
The friends group says another possible strategy is that Cityheart might take ownership and refurbish the hall, as an alternative to the cinema-based arts centre, which the group claims "now appears unlikely to be delivered by the district council".
The letter is co-signed by arts forum members Simon Baker (Livewire Rock Academy and Uncle Funk's Disco Inferno), comedian Paddy Lennox (Laughing Bishops Comedy Club) and Gailie Pollock (Contexture Theatre), by Yvonne Estop from the Cross-party ORL Working Group and by former Tory county, district and town councillor Colin Woodward.
The town council received £6.4m from education authority Herts County Council from the sale of disused allotment land in Farnham Road to build Avanti Meadows Primary School.
It has reinvested £5.44m of this in ambitious plans to develop a 40-acre multi-sports complex (£2.5m) to the north of Bishop's Stortford, to rival Ware's Wodson Park, and to secure the future of South Mill Arts by buying the South Road site (£2.94m) and leasing the theatre complex back to the centre's trustees on a peppercorn rent.
