A ROW that has split a village and lost residents up to £100,000 in grants for a new hall came to an end this week.

Villagers in Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe, near Thirsk, have been wrangling for months over a joint project between the primary school and the village institute to rebuild their shared hall.

The £350,000 development aims to create much-needed extra space for the school and better community facilities.

But the committee set up to find funding for the building work fell out earlier this year over how the new hall would be run.

Tensions came to a head after the charitable trust that runs the village institute - also used as a makeshift school hall - found out its status as a charity would be at risk if it continued with the scheme.

The chairman of the trustees, Mr Dave Walkland, had asked the Charities Commission, which regulates groups such as the institute's trust, for permission to go ahead with the development.

But the commissioner wrote back strongly advising against the project and Mr Walkland immediately pulled out in order to protect the institute.

This cost the committee a potential £100,000 in government funding from the Department for Education, as it was no longer eligible for the grant without the involvement of the institute.

A small faction of villagers, angered by the delay and the missed funding opportunity, demanded the heads of the institute trustees and offered to run the institute in their place with a view to getting the project back on track.

A series of strongly-worded notices was posted on the village noticeboard including one claiming a vote of no confidence in the institute trustees.

An extraordinary meeting of the institute's committee was held which ended in uproar when Mr Walkland threatened to resign.

But on Wednesday the Charities Commission made a complete U-turn on its previous advice to Mr Walkland and gave the project its seal of approval.

Mr Walkland blamed part of the row on the commission for what he labelled "dragging its heels".

"When I first wrote to them they said charity property could not be treated as an extension of the school," he said. "Unfortunately this divided the village into a them-and-us situation."

But the commission now feels that the project can go ahead, provided the hall technically belongs to the trustees and the school books it through the usual channels.

"The school will have block bookings for assemblies and so forth, but otherwise between 9am and 4pm the hall will be available for other groups to book," said Mr Walkland.

A meeting is being scheduled for the new year when Mr Walkland will step down as chairman of the institute and will hand it over to a new committee. "I will just be glad when it is all over," he said.

"Living in a village you need dialogue and you need to talk things out face to face. This problem would never have occurred if people had just knocked on my door. They have used a sledgehammer to try and crack a nut."