Happy New Year - Updates from Church Warden Tony

Good morning and Happy New Year. Church Warden Tony has kindly written a Year in Review for us.

​2024 has been a very busy year for the Churchwardens, the PCC and all the teams that keep the church in such a wonderful condition. I would first like to thank everybody for their time and effort; it really has been a wonderful team performance.
Along with many churches, we had a backlog of work accumulated during Covid which has now mostly been completed. Electrical, gas and fire certificates have been issued; boilers have been repaired, stonework patched, trees have been inspected, roof leaks fixed, drains unblocked, gutters cleared, flagpoles refurbished, woodworm treated, gates and posts replaced, fences fixed; the 'to-do' list never ends!
We have added 9 swift boxes to the bell tower and await new arrivals next year! We even play swift sounds to them to attract them to the tower. Friends of St Johns also very generously raised about £5 700 and paid for the re-laying of the church pathway.
In the coming year we will be doing more maintenance on the roof, repairing dislodged tiles, inspecting and repairing the church stonework and modifying the back door to make it wider and compliant with the fire regulations. There will be scaffolding in the church to replace some of the lights that have failed. We will also be doing the background work of design, costing and formal faculty applications for our bell refurbishment project.
Environmentally, we have an amazingly biodiverse churchyard containing hundreds of species of fauna and flora. We are constantly monitoring our carbon footprint and the heating system is regulated to only come on when a function has been planned.
If you see anything that needs fixing, please let one of the churchwardens know.
Regards
Tony.