A village hall has been given a lottery lifesaver that will enable its revamp to go ahead.

Cropthorne and Charlton Village Hall in Cropthorne, near Evesham, is geting a £67,379 top-up from the Big Lottery Fund that will guarantee the project’s future.

Lottery chiefs said the cash was an acknowledgement that community projects faced very tough economic conditions in which to raise money.

We reported how the village hall refurbishment project had already had £336,866 from the Community Buildings section of the lottery fund in 2009.

It is now one of three in the West Midlands to receive the top-up grants.

The extra cash will be used to change the layout of the building and refurbish the main hall to provide a meeting room, toilets, kitchen and entrance lobby. A new section will also be added to the original 1950s building.

It is hoped the revamp will provide facilities for a wide range of local organisations, as well as space for courses and surgeries for MPs and councillors.

Village hall management committee chairman Jacqui Kingsaid: “We applied for the large grant and what we got left us to find £53,000 ourselves. We worked very hard, sent 50 applications to other grant-giving bodies and through that and our own fund-raising managed to get £17,000.

“We were still rather short, but the lottery said because of economic conditions they were opening up another bidding process, so we applied and got this extra money.”

She said that without the latest sum, the original application would have been “undermined”. Work is now due to be finished by the autumn.

Across England, an extra £2.1 million of top-ups has been shared out among 22 projects.

John Taylor, head of the Big Lottery Fund in the West Midlands region, said: “It has been well documented how community groups have suffered financially during these harsh economic times so it gives me great pleasure to see this funding heading the way of truly worthwhile projects. We can now give them the means to enhance their communities in the way they originally intended.”