East Herts is asked to spend £22,500 on legal work towards handing Water Lane Hall to a community company. The Executive decides on Tuesday 8 September.

East Herts councillors are asked next Tuesday to spend up to £22,500 on legal work towards giving Water Lane Hall away. The Bishop’s Stortford building has been shut since September 2025.

The report goes to the council’s Executive on Tuesday 8 September at 7pm at Wallfields in Hertford, and is webcast. It is written by Councillor Carl Brittain, the Executive Member for Financial Sustainability, and affects Bishop’s Stortford North ward.

The single recommendation is narrow. Members are asked to approve the legal fees only, not the transfer itself. The report says there is “no assumption an asset transfer will be agreed”, and that a further report will come back before any decision.

How a hall bought for demolition ended up here

The council bought Water Lane Hall in 2019 for £975,000. The report is blunt about why. It was land assembly for the Old River Lane scheme, and the plan was to knock the hall down to re-provide surface parking for Waitrose, whose lease runs to 2042 and requires 156 spaces.

Because demolition was coming, the terms agreed at the time assumed the building was temporary:

  • a peppercorn lease for the United Reformed Church to run the hall
  • a repair obligation limited to the interior, non-structural parts
  • no right of vehicle access from Water Lane, which would not matter once the site was cleared
  • 11 parking spaces promised to the URC behind the Lemon Tree, to be provided after demolition

The consequence is stated plainly in the report: “the building has had no investment or maintenance since 2019 and has fallen into gradual disrepair, with known issues around damp, energy efficiency and subsidence”.

In 2023/24 the council changed the Old River Lane scheme, dropped the arts centre on viability grounds and took the hall out of the development boundary. The demolition that everything had been arranged around was no longer going to happen.

£1.6m, £500,000, or £300,000

The council commissioned AECOM to survey the building in spring 2025. Its condition report was issued in final form on 1 May 2025. On the structure it found the principal loadbearing frame “appears to be doing well for its age”, but flagged suspected ground subsidence across the whole footprint, timber decay, roof coverings beyond their serviceable life, no fire detection or alarm system, and a boiler around 20 years old.

The council’s figures from that survey are £1.6m to bring the hall to a state fit for commercial lease, or £500,000 to open it for ad hoc hire. The Friends of Water Lane Hall commissioned their own condition survey and put the repair bill “closer to £300,000”.

The two numbers have not been reconciled. The report says the AECOM survey remains the council’s formal position, while noting that a future owner “would not be bound by its findings”.

The money the group has actually raised

In February 2026 the council ran a public consultation on four options. Community ownership was ranked first by 82% of more than 600 online respondents, and 78% of 200 people surveyed in the street were in favour. Demolition came last.

The council then set the Friends three conditions to meet by 21 June:

  • raise £500,000 towards essential works, including the council’s own £170,000
  • form a community interest company with the right governance and expertise
  • submit a business plan validated by a credible third party

Two of those three are done. Water Lane Community Arts Studio CIC was incorporated on 8 April 2026, registered at Ducketts Wharf on South Street, and a business plan was submitted on time.

The money was not. The report records £7,000 raised from local fundraising events by the June deadline, against a £330,000 share. The group’s Crowdfunder page shows £1,019 from 36 supporters and is still open.

Bar chart showing the £1.6m of works at Water Lane Hall split into a £170,000 council contribution, a £330,000 first milestone for the community group and a further £1.1m second milestone, with £7,000 raised so far
The two funding milestones the council set, and what has been raised against the first

The report gives the group’s explanation, and accepts it. Grant funders told the Friends that competitive capital funding needs proof of ownership, not a letter of comfort. The council writes that “the issue of not having ownership to obtain funding was recognised as a significant barrier”. That is why members are being asked to move to the next stage with the funding milestone unmet.

What still has to be settled

The follow-up report will have to cover, among other things:

  • whether the council can satisfy section 123 of the Local Government Act 1972 on best value when disposing at less than market price, and subsidy control
  • restrictions on future use, and what happens to the building if the venture fails
  • vehicle and pedestrian access from Water Lane and Old River Lane, plus ownership of the mains sewer and the historic boundary walls
  • a 100-year lease to the URC for 11 parking spaces
  • full indemnity for the council against future liabilities
  • a peer review of the CIC’s business plan
  • the exact terms for releasing the £170,000, which is tied to match funding

The parking section is the most awkward. The 11 spaces promised behind the Lemon Tree cannot be built: four would sit in the gardens of 1, 2 and 3 Old River Lane, two on the footprint of a tree with a preservation order, and a listed boundary wall would have to come down, all inside a conservation area. The URC will not be bought out and will not move to Northgate End.

So the recommendation is to write down what already happens on the ground and lease the URC 11 of the hall’s own 17 spaces. There is a catch the report states directly: without the URC’s land, the hall “is effectively landlocked for vehicles”.

Two small discrepancies are worth noting for anyone reading the papers. The recommendation and the financial section both say £22,500, while paragraph 2.23 says £22,250. The letter reproduced at Appendix B is headed 11 March 2025, though the report dates it to 11 March 2026 and its own contents fit that year.

What it means for you

The hall is not reopening soon, whatever happens on Tuesday. Even on the council’s own timetable, the transfer only completes once a further £1.1m is raised, and the capital monitoring going to the same meeting assumes the £170,000 will be spent in 2027/28 rather than this year.

  • To watch the decision, the meeting is at 7pm on Tuesday 8 September in the Council Chamber at Wallfields, Hertford. There is a webcast, and the full 12MB reports pack is on the same page.
  • To back the campaign, the Friends of Water Lane Hall publish their plans and contact details at waterlanehall.org. They say they need volunteers with professional skills as much as donations.
  • If you used to hire the hall, nothing changes yet. Hirers were rehoused when the URC surrendered the lease a year ago.

The council’s own comparison is Ward Freeman Pool in Buntingford, another community asset transfer, which took £105,000 from the same Executive reserve in June. Councillor Mione Goldspink, the Executive Member for Neighbourhoods, said of Water Lane Hall in March that “we know this approach can be achievable with hard work and the right foundations”.

Other applications and decisions across the district are on our Bishop’s Stortford planning news page.