PLANS for a new £600,000 church hall at Christ Church have been submitted to Swindon Council.

If the plans are approved the local community will benefit from a modern, spacious hall with improved facilities which will replace the current 43-year-old church hall which was originally put up as a temporary building in 1969.

The new hall is being made possible thanks to £230,000 of Section 106 money supplied by the council. The remaining £370,000 will come out of the church’s own funds.

It is hoped that the building will be ready for use in early 2013.

Christ Church’s communications manager Stephen Grosvenor said: “It has been some time coming but it is exciting for us.

“The new hall will be bigger – it will beon the same site, but with a bigger footprint and more energy efficient, with more facilities and more offices. And it will be for the use of the local community, not just the church community.”

The plans involve demolishing the current hall and building a new one and the council is set to make a decision within the next few months.

Stephen said: “The old hall is really very old and was only built as a temporary structure.

“The roof is leaking and it has had its day really, but it has done very well.

“We had a report carried out which said it would cost about £100,000 to put everything right with the current hall. But it would still be a 40-year-old hall, but with £100,000 spent on stitching it up.

“A substantial amount of money is being put in to the new hall and it going to be a modular build which means it will be built off site and then brought in once finished. It is going to be quite a fast build.”

For the short period that Christ Church is without a church hall, arrangements will be made to ensure everybody who normally uses the hall will have somewhere to go.

“For example, we have a Tai Chi group which uses the hall and they could easily use the church instead – we have quite a bit of extra space,” said Stephen.

“And of course we have a lot of partnership church halls that we can use, so we will make sure that everybody is looked after.”