Hung Again
Following our earlier article on Langport’s Hanging Chapel, and the cost to repair it, we approached the Langport Town Clerk. Our editor reckoned he had not heard numbers discussed at the Town Trust meeting, for the likely repair costs. Town councillors present said the opposite.
So on the basis that the figures were discussed at the Town Trust meeting, clearly they are in the public domain whether or not the editor managed to miss them in the meeting!
Happily the Town Clerk, David Mears agreed and was kind enough to share the details with us.
The cost of the work that needs doing immediately is £6,150
Within the next year further work needs completing which will cost £19,960
However the report has also highlighted that for all the work that needs doing to be completed, the cost will come to a total of £111,400
For context then, let us repeat the numbers from our earlier post, giving numbers for the Langport Town Trust to illustrate the scale of the problem.
The Town Trust – what you need to know
Langport Town Trust as of the end of 2017 had a total of £63k in cash – but of this it is holding £30.5 on behalf of the Bagehot Memorial Fund, money which the September Trust meeting agreed to transfer to the Langport & District History Society. So there is £33k left.
During 2016/17 the trust was only able to meet its expenses by selling £43k of investments. That leaves it with just £12k in investments.
In the year 2016/17 the trust had expenses of £63k and income (excluding the one of sale of investments) of £34k. In other words without the sale of investments it would have had a shortfall of £29k.
With £33k in the bank and 12k in investments it should have been able to struggle through 2017/18 but those accounts have yet to be filed. The prognosis for 2018/19 does not look good.
Put simply the trust is almost out of cash and is running a large deficit.