A TINY Exmoor community which has raised more than a quarter of the £139,000 cost of a major refurbishment of its village hall has accused West Somerset Council of being miserly.

Villagers in Brompton Regis - where there are just 87 households - have struggled to secure funds for the project after the cash strapped district authority closed its grant scheme for village halls more than three years ago because of financial problems.

However, winning almost £100,000 of European funding in the summer meant work was finally able to get underway in October.

But organisers behind the project hoped the district council would still show some support for the efforts of hard pressed villagers.

And when a bill of just over £900 came in for building control fees, they asked the authority to waive it.

The council refused and on Wednesday a group of villagers travelled to the council's Williton headquarters with a large charity-style cheque in protest.

Village hall secretary Jenny Stringer said: "Our message to West Somerset Council is: 'Shame on you'.

"This would only have cost the council around £750 because they wouldn't have had to pay the VAT - we have had to work so hard to get this project off the ground and we just felt they could have been a bit more magnanimous."

Mrs Stringer said villagers were also disappointed that the council had been unable to give them a £60,000 loan facility to ease cash flow problems by only being able to claim the grant aid quarterly.

In the end, Mrs Stringer's 86-year-old mother Frederica Lawrence loaned the project £30,000.

Villagers have run coffee mornings, jumble sales and bingo sessions, completed sponsored walks and even staged a concert to raise £40,000 of the cost themselves, with £6,000 in increased Council Tax bills through a grant from Brompton Regis Parish Council.

Mrs Stringer said the village would never have embarked on the improvements - which will provide a new kitchen, toilets, committee room, storage and disabled facilities - had the district council not had its original grant scheme in operation.

"Back in 2006 we were advised that we had a good chance of getting £70,000 of funding but then in spring the following year the council announced it was closing the scheme because of its financial problems.

"We'd already got things moving and we were determined not to give up so we just carried on fundraising and looking for other grants."

The £99,950 grant secured this year from the Local Action for Rural Communities (LARC), coupled with £1,000 from the Exmoor National Park Authority and another donation from a charitable trust meant the project could finally get underway, with work scheduled for completion by the end of March.

Mrs Stringer said villagers felt that West Somerset's rural communities were continually losing out.

"We have less houses in Brompton Regis than in an average street in Minehead and we just feel we have to do everything ourselves, without any help.

"The council managed to find funding to help Minehead get a new hospital and the Minehead EYE youth and community centre, yet couldn't find a penny to help Brompton Regis.

"We have no bus service, no mobile phone signal and certainly no facilities like Minehead. This was such a small amount of money to the council and yet to us it's the cost of a new cooker for the hall."

West Somerset Council spokesman Stacey Beaumont said the authority had been instrumental in helping to secure more than £2 million of LARC funding for local community projects and Brompton Regis Village Hall Committee had benefited from almost £100,000 of the cash for its project.

"So whilst the council cannot afford direct contributions, it has found alternative ways of supporting community projects," she said.

"Building regulation fees are applied uniformly across the district and it is the developer's responsibility to ensure that their project complies with government legislation.

"The Brompton project's agent was informed of the inspection fee in March 2008 and all building project costs should be factored into the overall costs at the outset.

"The council cannot waive fees for one project while charging for another in much the same way as it could not grant the team's request for a £60,000 bridging loan as these costs would then fall to taxpayers across the whole district."