This morning I answered a question on the Llandyrnog Community Facebook page in regards to progress with the project and the purchasing over the shop. Over the last few months we have updated both our website and Facebook pages but wanted everyone to see the extended response we made this morning –
“Our Community Facility Programme grant application with the Welsh Government was due to have been to have been concluded by the end of June but was given all sorts of reasons why there was a delay. Eventually the news broke that the Government had a £900m budget deficit and immediately stopped all expenditure under they had undertaken a full review.
We continue to press for an urgent decision and although they had 3 further meetings last week there is still no positive update. We have two MS’s supporting us who have been writing to Ministers in Cardiff Bay, as we have, but with no response.
We have had meetings to discuss the situation and have one planned for the 22nd to review the project again.
Please be assured that we are doing everything humanly possible but things are currently out of our hands.
All share funds raised is secure and will not be touched until we have all the funding in place. “
Just to add a couple of thing – the current £200,000 grant we secured from the UK Levelling up department has an expiry date of 10th December 2023 by which time it will expire unless used. We cannot use it until we have full match funding in place. We have had meeting with the department in an attempt negotiate an extension of time due to the Welsh Government delay but so far have not had a favourable response. Our MP is doing everything he can to try and influence this but we will have to be patient.
We have considered looking through other grant facilities but there are limited options to purchase an asset such as we want to do. There are plenty of options once we have purchased the building such as local wind farm grants and lottery but will not help us at the moment.
I know some of you have asking about the issue of the share certificates for the money invested – our intention was to have sent these out when we were expecting the final funding to come in at the end of June. We decided to hold back on sending these out until we knew we had all the funding in place as failing to get this would necessitate us to return the monies to investors. We still have time but I ask for your patience until we see exactly where we end up.
I will update you after our meeting on the 22nd September and will continue everything we can for the success of the project.
If you have any thoughts or comments feel free to get in touch either through Facebook or emailing llandyrnogcommunityshop@btinternet.com
