Getting ready to open your space
Opening your hall to the public is an exciting moment. You might be relaunching a space as it was, or you might have carried out refurbishment and made big changes. Whatever the circumstances, here are some tips to help you make sure you’re ready to provide the best space and services to the community.
Create a welcoming, clean and multi-use space
To do this you should think about:
- Who are the user groups?
- How will people be welcomed when they enter?
- How much storage will they need? – often over-looked and lacking in community spaces!
- Are things easy to locate, clean and maintain?
- Can spaces have multiple uses?
- How close is parking for deliveries and equipment and accessibility?
Make sure you have all the handover documents
Have you received from the building/asset owner, landlord or appointed agent sufficient information and documentation relating to the space/building?
There are a lot of things to think about when eventually your building is handed over and it can be both an exciting and stressful time. This building handover checklist will help you think about the things you need to know and need to ask prior to or at handover.
Ensure the space is safe and compliant
Make sure you have identified and organised the most important facilities, services and supporting documentation prior to opening your community space, ensuring a safe and complaint environment in which to welcome visitors, users, staff and volunteers.
The Day 1 checklist from DTAS will help you think about what should be in place before you open your community space for use.
You can find out more in our section on legal responsibilities.
Identify the different management tasks and make sure you've agreed who is responsible
When running/prior to opening a community space, it is useful to define and allocate all the tasks required for the ongoing management of the space. This could include things like:
- agreeing who will handle and check any payments
- decide who will be a key-holder and be responsible for opening and closing the facility
- agree who will welcome and induct any new users of the space
- decide who will be in charge of checking and ordering any supplies.
The management and maintenance and managing the use of the assetchecklists from DTAS can help you work out what tasks you will have.
You can find out more in our section on facilities management.
Create your own hub handbook
Put together all the important documents, policies and important information in one place – your hall’s very own handbook. This could be a physical folder that you keep in the space, or an online folder that can be shared easily (or both!). This means it’s easy for anyone who needs it to find information – whether that’s your management committee members, staff, volunteers, tenants, users and visitors alike.
You could include:
- contact details for key people
- any safety certificates
- any evacuation or fire plan details
- your constitution and legal documents
- any policies you have, e.g. for renting the space, for employment, etc.
- any complaints procedure you have
- any forms that people using the space will need to complete.
You should review this regularly and make sure it’s up to date.
Let the community know the space is open and ready
To make your hall a success, you need people to use it. So make sure you let the community know all about it, including celebrating the steps you’ve taken to get it open and ready.
How you promote the hall will depend on what will work best for your community – whether that’s posters around a village, going door-to-door to talk to people, or sharing information online.
You could have an open day or party to let people see the space and hear about the plans. If you’re going to have different people using the space for classes or events, invite them to host a table where they can tell people about their offering. You can also use this time to ask the community what they want from the space. It will help people feel the space is for them, and might give you some good ideas of activities you could put on.