From Vision to Reality: The First 6 Months of Otley Common
- otley2030
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
By October 2025, we managed to raise an incredible £830k, which included over £400k of investment from our community share offer. This was enough to surpass our Minimum Target of £709k, which enabled us to commit to buying the building for £490k. This post sets out what we have done since then and what’s still to do.
Despite completing extensive surveys before purchase, there was still a lot we had to learn about the building. This was for two main reasons:
Restricted access to the building
The prohibitive costs of extensive investigations in such an old, complex building
Despite this, we were confident the building was in good enough condition for us to compete and start to put our plans into action.
Repairs and Renovations
Our Activation Lead, Andrew Howarth, and Project Manager, Richard Davies, in consultation with our architects, Stead and Co, decided a top down approach was the most sensible course of action. We employed Valley View Roofers to start work on the complex roofs of the buildings. A mixture of poor design and a lack of regular maintenance had meant there was water ingress into the building in many places. Luckily this was mainly caused by vegetation and erosion of seals and pointing. Structurally the roof was fairly sound, but there was still a lot of work to do to reach a point where we felt comfortable water was no longer ingressing into the building. The most severe water damage was to timbers in Room 2 and the Chapel that we have had to strengthen with steel.
As the roofers progressed around the building, our team of local tradespeople and enthusiastic volunteers worked in the rooms below where they had finished. This meant a focus on the Wesley Hall and its adjoining Sunday School Rooms (that we are converting into office/studio lets). A big thank you to local tradespeople David Burrows, Ben Lockhart, Dan Bixley and Darren Pooley for all their work to bring these rooms back to life.
Once the professionals had done all of the structural work, our team of volunteers, who had up until that point been painting the Parlour (our reception currently) and corridors, moved into the Sunday School Rooms to clean and decorate in order to make them ready for occupation. They were then followed by our electricians Dan, Martin, Thomas and Andy, who installed power and data to each of those rooms.
Running in parallel to this work, we also had Byfield Heating installing new energy efficient boilers with digital controls, which now enable us to heat specific rooms in the building from a phone app.
Whilst the scaffolding (provided by local firm DRS) has been in place, Wharfedale Pest Control have cleaned up the front of the building and installed new pigeon deterrents, and we have painted the windows and repaired some of the pointing. We were able to do this because we have trained some of the volunteers in heritage pointing and Safe Working at Height.
Other key renovations include sanding and sealing the Wesley Hall floor (and repainting the badminton court) and renovating the Sunday School Rooms on the west ground floor of the Wesley Hall to make a classroom, office and storeroom. We have also converted the former Vestry into the Otley Common office and installed energy efficient LED lighting in many rooms.
On the outside of the building, our gardening volunteers, led ably by Meg, have cleared away all of the damaging ivy and buddleias from the building, and started to plant bulbs and new plants. We have also gutted the Caretaker’s Cottage, which is now ready for renovation.
Operations
During these renovations we have managed to support existing tenants, such as Guides and Brownies, Otley Methodist Church, Jujitsu, and Otley Action for Older People in the building - a big thank you to them and other tenants for their patience as we have worked around them.
As rooms have been completed, we have slowly been able to welcome more groups into the building. These have included the Pop n Rock Choir, Momenta ballroom dancing, Otley Table Tennis Club, Wayzgoose, U3A, Lauburu Languages, Otley Camera Club, and many more.
We have also started to host events, with various birthdays having been celebrated in the Wesley Hall, and Otley Players becoming the first group to perform in the refurbished Wesley Hall, making use of our new sound and lighting equipment. On Friday 15th May, we will host our first Common Varieties night, organised by Steve Huison, and in July we will have our first wedding reception. Big events coming later in the year include Otley Beer Festival, Otley Folk Festival, Wildlife Friendly Otley’s Art Festival, and the inaugural Otley Book Festival.
Our first six months of operations were overseen by our Activation Lead, Andrew Howarth, who has recently been joined on our team by Administrator, Debbie Ashbridge, Joe Grant, as our Operations Lead, and Greg Przybyszewski on cleaning duties. Our paid operations staff have been ably assisted by a number of highly skilled volunteers, with Gareth Durling leading our volunteer team, Jane Crowder looking after our health and safety, and Jarrod Hollingdrake leading on marketing.
This has all been watched over by our wonderful directors Clare Smith, Richard Davies, Andy Boyle, and Angela Wilkinson. With our Governance team also making sure we are compliant with all of the latest regulations.
If you would like to volunteer, click the link below:
What’s next?
Our fundraising surpassed the Minimum Target of £709k, but fell someway short of our Optimal Target £927k. We have therefore decided to reopen our share offer. This is for a number of reasons:
To complete the renovations that we haven't been able to do so far (see below)
To enable people who missed out the first time to invest
To enable current investors to increase their investment if they would like to
To increase our capacity to host more events sooner
Click below to learn more and invest:
This new drive has already been bolstered by Otley Town Council investing £22k from the Investing in Otley fund.
What renovations still need to be completed?
We have big plans for the building and multiple phases of development, but for now we are focussing on Phase 1 plans from our share offer. These include:
Renovating the Caretaker’s cottage
Setting up a cafe/bar
New lighting in the Wesley Hall
Updating our fire alarms
Decorating our Youth and Lecture Rooms
Events, Groups and Lettings
We already have a few of our Studios let to groups including Otley 2030, Outside the Box, and Selah Counselling. We have a lot of expressions of interest in the other studios, so if you would like to rent an office for business or maybe an arts studio get in touch ASAP.
We’re also open to more community groups renting space, but again our calendar is quickly filling up, so do get in touch if your group would like to rent space regularly for your meetings or classes.
And if you would like to host an event, be it your birthday party, wedding or bah mitzvah, we are open for bookings, and if you are a performer or want to organise an open event at the Common, then let us know.
