Update on the Lighting Project
CAN YOU HELP PLEASE? Following recent changes made by the government, St Mary’s Church can no longer recover £30,000 VAT for this project to replace the failing interior lighting. We need further financial support.
Cheques payable to Saffron Walden PCC (Then pop through Parish Office letter box or post to St Mary's Church, Church Path, Saffron Walden, CB10 1JP)
Online - Account name: Saffron Walden Parochial Church Council,
Sort code: 20-74-05
A/c No: 70787116
Reference: Lighting Project
£20,000 Matched Funding - Our Replacement Lighting
We received the wonderful news at the start April that an anonymous donor has indicated that they will match £ for £ any funds raised from now until September. This includes sponsorship for Steve Hasler's cycle ride from Holyhead to Cardiff in May and any donations received and money from successful grant applications. If you are minded to donate to the project, any donation will be doubled until the full £20,000 is matched. Meanwhile the first grant application has been made to Friends of Essex Churches Trust and a number of others will follow in April and May.
Steve Halser's Cycle Ride: To help with this, Steve Hasler, who leads the project, will be cycling the “Lôn Las Cymru”, see map on right, a 4-day sponsored ride from 6th to 9th May 2025 through Wales from Holyhead to Cardiff : 253 miles and 16,500 feet of climbing in total. If you would like to sponsor Steve's cycle ride, sign-up sheets are on display at the back of St Mary’s or donate online using the above bank details. If you want to follow Steve's ride, you can do so at lonlascymrumay2025.blogspot.com which will be live nearer to the start date of 6th May and be updated with a report at the end of each day’s ride.
On 6th March, members of the Lighting Team interviewed the two contractors with the lowest bids and recommended to the March PCC that we appoint Tom Flynn Electrical to carry out the installation. Part of the final selection process was for the final two contractors to re-price the project to include some cost savings that we had identified. Both contractors are experienced in lighting work in churches of our size and in some of the cathedrals in the country. TFE were still the most cost effective and their price, before VAT, is now very close to the cost estimated by our Lighting Designer when he developed the initial concept design late in 2023 despite building cost inflation over the intervening 15 months. Unfortunately, mainly due to the change made by the government in February on how much VAT we can reclaim annually, we are now clear that our funding gap is £38,000. £28,000 of this is VAT that we can no longer reclaim.
At the March PCC, it was agreed to appoint TFE, to progress more fundraising and to start the installation in mid-September. PCC acknowledged that if we don’t have all the money required, the last parts of the project, which will probably be the north and south chapels, won’t get new lighting. However, we plan to avoid this and the matched funding will help a great deal.
On the installation, we are starting to get some information on the programme. The work will start in the side aisles on 15th September and it is hoped that the new lighting will be in place by the second half of October. The work in the side aisles will start with the removal of the existing lighting and the rigging up of some temporary lighting and a similar approach will be taken for each area of the church. The nave will be next and the target is to have this finished before the contractors take a break for Christmas from 10th December. When they return in January, they will tackle the chancel and sanctuary followed by the chapels and the project should finish in mid-March.
For now, it’s back to training for my cycle ride from Holyhead to Cardiff and working with our Fundraising Team to get a number of grant applications made.
Steve Hasler
Project Leader
April 6th, 2025