A GRANT of £22,000 has been awarded to Cheriton Bishop Village Hall management committee to improve the facilities and extend disabled access.

Mrs Janet Grist, chairman of the committee, said it was going to be ?all systems go? at the village hall this summer thanks to the grant to improve disabled access and upgrade the car park.

?In our rural environment the village hall is the centre of village life and should be available for all, whatever their disability,? said Mrs Grist.

Last year, adult education classes, with the subject of flowers in watercolour, were run at the village hall. Mrs Grist said one of the students was confined to a wheelchair for 12 months, which had shown the need for disabled facilities.

?In her own words, ?the classes were a life saver?. She had never painted since her school days and she became engrossed in her new-found hobby,? said Mrs Grist.

Now the long process of winning funding had been successfully completed, the village would have ?a hall to be proud of, knowing that no members of the community have been ignored?.

The total cost of the work will be £27,000. Fundraising events in the past four months have raised more than £1,000 and the parish council and two Devon charitable trusts have granted a further £1,300 to the project.

The Community Fund, one of the distributors of National Lottery money, this week announced a new round of grants totalling £2,267,378 to groups and charitable and voluntary organisations in the South West region.

Out of every £1 spent on the National Lottery, the Community Fund gets 4.7p.

Lin Whitfield, chair of the Community Fund?s South West regional committee, said: ?Our grant-making income is almost half of what it was two years ago and we must therefore ensure that the considerable budget, currently £12-million a year, we have, continues to make a difference to the lives of the most disadvantaged people and communities in the region.

?We are looking for bids that really will change people?s lives and I believe that this round of grants will do exactly that,? she said.

Community Fund staff are keen to discuss ideas for bids and though they cannot help fill in the application form, they are can offer support and state whether a project has a good chance of success.

All you have to do is ring Community Fund enquiries officer, Louise Bowers on 01392 849701 or visit