VILLAGERS in the north Cotswolds have hit out at National Lottery bosses for saying they had no money to help replace their crumbling village hall - and then handing £47 million to the Millennium Dome.

Fund-raisers in Condicote were stunned when they received a letter last week telling them their plea for funds from the National Lottery Charities Board had been rejected for a second time, despite the organisers sending them a letter that said: "The bid represented good value for the money."

Dismayed fund-raiser Sue Pearce said: "It makes me feel a bit sick when they have just announced they have given another £47 million to the Dome. That really was the final straw."

She added: "We weren't asking for an awful lot. It was just over £100,000 and they said our application had been prepared with good consultation with the community."

Condicote's wooden hall was originally built in 1917 and moved to its present site in 1931, but has been rapidly deteriorating. Users include a playgroup and keep-fit classes, but it is so small numbers have to be limited for community events, such as harvest supper.

With fewer than 200 residents in the village, they decided in 1998 to try to find the money for a larger £180,000 hall raising more than £20,700 by their own efforts.

They had to spend £1,500 on an archaeological survey of the site, which is next to a prehistoric henge, before gaining planning permission. The first Lottery application was rejected in February, although the Charities Board encouraged them to reapply if they could confirm other grants and cut costs.

They quickly did all that was asked of them, but still no Lottery funds were forthcoming.

Now Mrs Pearce has another worry. "The fact is the other money we have secured is time limited. It was based on the assumption we were going to start building in July. We didn't anticipate we would wait another six months to hear the results of the application.

"Had we known in March they hadn't got enough money we could have been doing other things. We are back to square one now."

A public meeting will held in the village to see whether residents want to try again even though the other grants may not be available.

Not all is doom and gloom and Mrs Pearce admitted: "The actual fund-raising has had a lot of benefit, making us more of a community."

Mr John Skrine, for the Charities Board in the south west, said: "Unfortunately we always have a number we don't have the money to fund even though they meet our criteria." The Dome is funded by the Millennium Commission.