- Area:
- North West England
- Programme:
- Communities Living Sustainably
- Release date:
- 3 9 2012
An inspirational environmental scheme to transform the lives of a rural community struggling with the highest fuel poverty in the country* is just one of four North West projects to receive £1 million to create a greener and more sustainable future.
The projects are among 12 community schemes across England, awarded under the Big Lottery Fund’s Communities Living Sustainably programme, which aims to inspire people to adapt the way they live and work and connect together to reap financial, environmental and health gains.
Helen Bullough, Big Lottery Fund Head of North West Region said: “When we first launched this initiative at the end of last year, we wanted to ignite the imagination of communities across the North West to think up innovative ways to make sustainable living like second nature, while also helping the region’s vulnerable people reduce their costs and improve their quality of life.
“With adverse weather affecting crops globally - which is likely to cause an increase in food prices in UK supermarkets*- and with fuel bills predicted to rise this winter, now is the time to encourage people to take small steps towards sustainable living at a local level which will help people cope with these added pressures during the recession.”
Earlier in the year, 30 community groups received up to £10,000 to work in partnership with local people, councils, schools, businesses, and voluntary groups to draw up detailed plans for how their community can become greener. Now the 12 chosen projects will use their funding to deliver their ideas.
An innovative Cumbrian scheme to increase sustainable energy efficiency, provide key skills learning, generate local enterprise, and build resilience to area flooding today receives over £955,000. Action for Sustainability - SustainEden will deliver activities across the Eden District, an area with a population of 52,000. With 71 per cent of the population living in rural areas, Eden is ranked in the top one per cent for sparsity in England and Wales. Transport links are often dependent on exposed routes which are closed during extreme weather and a high proportion of solid walled properties, which are not on the gas grid, contribute to Eden's fuel poverty rate of 40 per cent, the highest in England**.
The scheme will include test draught proofing for hard to treat older homes, advice on efficiency savings, and the development of a social enterprise energy supply company to set up a ‘green tariff’ to reduce local energy costs. The project will also raise awareness on how to reduce waste and water consumption, and support residents living in rural isolation through a trial bus service and car sharing schemes.
Addressing key local issues around flooding, the project will work with organisations such as mental health teams and Age Concern to ensure communities are better prepared for extreme weather. Looking to the future, the project will also deliver a creative, interactive school programme to encourage local youngsters to get involved in issues around climate change, planning and resilience.
SustainEden will work in partnership with local community organisations, including Eden District Council, Cumbrian Flood Recovery and Resilience Partnership, Cumberland and Westmoreland Herald, Cumbria Rural Enterprise Agency, and Cumbria Woodlands.
Caroline Turner Development Officer said: “We are delighted to have secured this funding for the benefit of Eden residents. Eden’s landscape and the sparsity of our population, combined with a high proportion of traditional, solid wall houses mean that we are even moreaffected by rising fuel prices, extreme weather events and scarcity of services. Working with our partners, the SustainEden project seeks to overcome these issues, improving the economic, social and environmental resilience of our local towns, villages and hamlets in the long term.”
Planting the seeds of change for one of the top 1% most deprived areas in the country *** Willow Park, Housing Trust (WP) - Real Food Wythenshawe receives a £1 million investment to transform over 300 allotments and large areas of local green space as part of an innovative new scheme to provide healthy sustainable food sources for the community.
The scheme will include an experimental indoor growing system based at Manchester College which will develop new ways of producing food. It will also cultivate new growing spaces around the community to develop food enterprise initiatives, as well as mapping and harvesting the areas abundant fruit trees and planting new fruit trees in local residential gardens.
The project will further promote healthy eating hubs including hands on cooking sessions using local produce, and expand a local walled garden to create a vegetable box enterprise in particular to support vulnerable groups such as those living with poor mental health or receiving treatment at Wythenshawe Hospital.
Real Food Wythenshawe will work in partnership with ten organisations including, Manchester City Council, The Manchester College, University Hospital South Manchester (UHSM) Parkway Green Housing Trust, Wythenshawe Forum Trust, URBED, BITE, EMERGE and FareShare North West.
Working to support people with learning disabilities, the BME community, older people living in severe fuel poverty and people on low incomes Granby Toxteth Development Trust receives over £917,000 for L8 Living Sustainably. Based in Princes Park and Riverside wards of Liverpool the scheme will explore innovative ways to help people improve their lives by creating new and economic energy resources, developing fresh local food sources, and raising awareness on the impact of climate change.
The project will create a neighbourhood power station and L8 community energy venture to install PV panels on houses to capture solar energy which will be converted into electricity and then sold to local households on a reduced tariff to help reduce fuel bills by 30 per cent. The scheme will also include a Patchwork Urban Farm for local people to grow and sell nutritious food which will be promoted by the L8 Superstore and mobile Veg Van delivery service.
Promoting green business initiatives the scheme will also provide training and support for businesses to increase their capacity to install energy efficiency measures for households, and will set up a special resource to provide digital access to the project through social media, a website, and climate change blog. The scheme will also use learning and training opportunities to engage young people not in education, employment or training and people with learning disabilities.
L8 Living Sustainably will work in partnership with ten organisations including Dingle Multi-Agency Centre, The Liverpool Food Alliance, the UK Association of Rights and Humanity, the L8 Superstore and Liverpool Vision.
Also awarded today, The Broughton Trust - Irwell Valley Sustainable Communities Project in Salford, Greater Manchester receives close to £1 million. The project will support Lower and Higher Broughton, and Kersal in East Salford, an area susceptible to flooding from the River Irwell, and one of the top six deprived wards in Salford with over 40 per cent of children classed as living in poverty, and with over 70 per cent of the population dependent on benefits and living in social or private rented accommodation.* ***
The project will include the setting up a community research project to raise awareness on climate change, and will create community green champions to identify local projects that can be developed and run by local people, and generate green jobs in the area. The scheme will set up testing of a personal carbon impact tool with 100 local residents to monitor energy efficiency which will be developed for wider use across the community to help residents save money on their fuel. Community groups will also be set up to address flooding issues, river usage, and food growing, with a number of currently disused key sites to be developed for community growing projects. The project will also develop a social enterprise.
Irwell Valley Sustainable Communities will work in partnership with ten organisations including Salford City Council, University of Salford, Helping Hands, St Sebastian's Community Centre and Biospherics CIC.
Supporting the groups each step of the way will be a partnership, led by Groundwork UK and including BRE, Federation of City Farms, Energy Savings Trust and nef. It will offer advice and guidance and also establish a learning support network to capture and share learning with other communities and inform the future development of investments of BIG’s Sustainable and Resilient Communities strategy. (www.communitieslivingsustainably.org.uk)
Further Information
Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888
Out of hours media contact: 07867 500 572
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Ask BIG a question here: https://ask.biglotteryfund.org.uk
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Notes to Editors
- The Big Lottery Fund (BIG), the largest distributor of National Lottery good cause funding, is responsible for giving out 40% of the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery.
- BIG is committed to bringing real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need and has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK. Since June 2004 BIG has awarded over £4.4bn.
- The Fund was formally established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.
- Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to good causes. As a result, over £28 billion has now been raised and more than 383,000 grants awarded across arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.
- *Fuel Poverty Action http://fuelpovertyaction.org.uk/the-facts/
- **DECC2010:
- ***2010 Index of Multiple Deprivation: http://www.communities.gov.uk/communities/research/indicesdeprivation/deprivation10/
- **** Salford City Council
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