Allan Oscroft writes: About four years ago, Elders and Church Meeting laid down criteria for commercial and charitable lettings. The agreed criteria was that lettings should be divided on a 50:50 basis between commercial and charitable lettings on a TIME basis.

Currently four rooms are let (licensed) to charities and there is a prospect of one more room also being let to a charity. Taking the four current lets, the time element is 8 hours a day, times 5 days a week, times 52 weeks a year which, for all four lets, gives a figures of 8,320 hours a year. Add to this, the other charitable lettings we receive in a year, and the grand total for charitable lettings is 9,155 hours.

Commercial bookings for the 04/05 financial year amounted to 3,925 hours; thus on a time basis, the current split between commercial and charity hours is: Charities 67.5%, Commercial 32.5%.

Now let us consider the income side of the equation. For the calendar year 2005 total income from hall and room lettings was £72,117, of which charities (including lettings) was £14,931 or 20.7% and commercial £57,186 or 79.3%. Why the large discrepancy between money and time? Further analysis shows that, in fact, our charitable permanent lets, are at an extremely low amount as a rate per hour, and this distorts the figures. Personally, I am very happy that these charities receive our help in this way.

I hope that this note goes some way to clearing up any misunderstandings concerning our lettings. One final thought for you. Currently the annual value of hall lettings, both commercial and charity, just about equals the annual value of regular giving and loose offerings. If we didn’t have the letting income, and we wished to continue our church’s work as it is at the moment, we would all have to double our current giving – are you up for that increase?!