ISG has secured its latest project via the influential North West Construction Hub framework, taking a £3.6 million scheme to deliver a new primary school for Warrington Borough Council.

The project sees ISG build a modern single-storey school at the existing Woolston Community Primary School site. On completion of the new facility in September 2013, staff and pupils will move across to the new building and the contractor will then demolish the old school to make way for landscaping, recreational areas and car parking.

The new steel frame school building has been designed to sit sympathetically within the surrounding built environment and features brickwork and cladding to its façade, with a composite roof structure.

In addition to modern, well designed teaching accommodation, the new school includes a sports hall, spacious reception area, dining room and commercial kitchen, and a number of staff and administrative offices.

The large external component of the project sees the creation of a new playing field, playground areas and attractive landscaping across the site.

ISG’s Jim Parker, managing director – North West, commented: “The North West Construction Hub continues to grow in strength and utility by enabling regional authorities to quickly and efficiently procure important capital projects.

“The importance of both maintaining and delivering high quality, purpose-built education facilities cannot be underestimated, and we are confident that this substantial investment in education provision will deliver a lasting and highly positive legacy within the local community.”

As part of the Green Deal, up to 100 homes in Lymm will benefit from free energy assessments. You’ll get a free report to help you to stop wasting energy and burning cash. And it you decide you want to take things further, Low Carbon Lymm will help you to make the most of Green Deal opportunities. Together we could save over £1 million per year in energy costs and help to make Lymm a greener village for our children.

To book your free energy assessment, download and complete the form and email it to us at info@lowcarbonlymm.org.uk as soon as possible or alternatively call Richard Pearce on 01925 754480. The free assessment offer is open until the end of March 2013 on a first-come, first-served basis.

The Green Deal is a new way to pay for energy-saving home improvements, to combat rising energy costs and to make homes more comfortable. It lets you pay for some or all of the improvements over time through your electricity bill. Repayments will be no more than what a typical household should save in energy costs.

The starting point is to undertake a Green Deal Assessment which will be provided free-of-charge to 100 Lymm households – the normal costs of these assessments are £120 to £150. Independent help will then be available through Low Carbon Lymm to guide residents through the Green Deal process for those who decide to take things further.

Households can also benefit from:

• The Green Deal Cashback Scheme which could be worth over £1000 on a package of energy saving improvements;
• The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) which will fund energy efficiency improvements in older properties especially those with solid walls and difficult to treat cavity walls.

Find out more information on the Green Deal via Warrington Borough Council – Green Deal

The results of Low Carbon Lymm’s LEAF project were presented to an invited audience at the Youth & Community Centre on 24^th March in the event opened by David Mowat MP. On display were colourful maps of the different areas of Lymm showing house types and ages with examples of the potential energy and carbon savings for typical properties from the household energy surveys.

Information and advice on how to achieve energy savings was provided at the event by the Energy Savings Trust’s Energy Efficiency Advice Centre, Warrington Borough Council and B&Q.

In his presentation on the initial outcomes of the project Richard Pearce reported that: “the baseline assessment of energy use shows that we spend around £7million a year on gas and electricity in our homes in Lymm. The results of the energy surveys to-date have shown that there is potential to save over £750K a year on cost-effective measures such as insulation, boiler replacement, heating controls and energy efficient lighting. More savings can be achieved through a wide range of ‘no and low cost’ actions such as turning your heating thermostat down by 1^oC, switching off your appliances rather than leaving them on standby and buying energy efficient appliances.”

“Amazing amount of work has gone into survey….very impressive…. very informative and useful “ were just some examples of the event feedback received. Over 80% said that they had been inspired to make changes in their use of energy in the home as a result of the event.

A full report on the LEAF project will be produced by the end of April and in the meantime Low Carbon Lymm will be working on an action plan to realise the potential energy and cost savings through targeted campaigns on the high priority measures.

Thank you to everyone who has been involved in this project, and we hope it has encouraged you to make some positive changes and save a bit of money along the way. There’s still a lot more that can be acheived and if you have any questions then please get in touch  - info@lowcarbonlymm.org.uk

If you have a WA13 address you could be given an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) for your house within the next four weeks, completely free and without obligation. The EPC will identify the priorities for saving energy and money. They normally cost around £100, remain valid for ten years and are required if you sell or let your home. Even if you have no personal interest in an EPC you will, by putting your home forward for assessment, contribute to the community as a whole. Please read on to find out how.

The funding will also be used to create a detailed map of the different property types in Lymm. The map combined with the sample EPC’s will show where the priority areas for energy efficiency improvements in Lymm are.

When the Government’s Green Deal comes into force in the autumn this information will hopefully also put Lymm home owners in a good position to apply for upgrades to hard-to-insulate older properties. The essence of the Green Deal is that the owner has no capital outlay but pays instead through a higher unit cost of electricity arranged in such a way that the ‘after’ energy bill is in any case lower than before.

We hope you would like to support Low Carbon Lymm as it deserves credit for getting significant public money against stiff competition. It will require sustained effort to recruit 250 householders in the short time available. So please get in touch and request an EPC by either emailing us at info@lowcarbonlymm.org.uk or phoning Richard Pearce on 01925 754480 especially if your house was built in the period 1930 to 1975. If you know of people who might benefit and who do not have internet access, please tell them about this opportunity. It is important that the surveys provide a representative spread in terms of property type, age and location for Lymm as a whole so it will not be possible to fulfill all the requests which are made.

A community event to present the results of the project will be on Saturday 24^th March at Lymm Youth & Community Centre­ – more details to follow soon.

Image: Electrical Testers

Warrington Borough Council have released a newsletter telling residents about waste that can now go into our Blue Bins and subsequently be recycled.  There is also a great deal for compost bins at the moment, from only £15 + delivery, that way you should be recycling the majority of the rubbish you generate in the home.

Download the newsletter here – Warrington Recycler Spring 2012 and get recycling!

Click on the image below to download the leaflet.

Low Carbon Lymm has been awarded £47,000 of government funding from the ‘Local Energy Assessment Fund’ (LEAF). The funding will enable Low Carbon Lymm to carry out an extensive programme of community engagement, energy profiling and energy efficiency surveys in and around Lymm.  The project will focus on increasing the uptake of energy efficiency measures in homes, small businesses and community buildings to identify potential for savings.

The group is looking for 250 homes in the Lymm area (postcode WA13) to receive a free home survey from a qualified assessor. A qualified assessor will visit your home and perform a survey looking at each room of the house. Each home will receive a report that is tailored to their property, with recommendations on how to cut bills and achieve savings, as well as identifying measures that could be delivered cost-effectively when the government’s Green Deal is launched in the autumn. The Energy Saving Trust currently quotes annual savings of £310 for people who install loft and cavity wall insulation. Practical advice and support will also be provided to householders.

Homeowners can register their interest by calling 0800 512 012 or emailing info@lowcarbonlymm.org.uk. This is a limited-time offer and on a first-come-first-served basis. If your interest in applying please fill in our application form here and email it to us.

In addition to the home assessments, 20 small businesses and 10 community buildings will be surveyed as part of the project. Through a programme of community engagement and home and business energy surveys the project aims to investigate awareness of, and attitudes towards, energy use and the barriers to taking action. The results will be presented at an event to be held in March this year.

The project provides a firm basis for developing and implementing Low Carbon Lymm’s future plans that aim to make Lymm an exemplar of sustainable, low carbon living.  This project is being completed in partnership between Low Carbon Lymm, Energy Projects Plus, CB3 Design Limited, Property Inspection Limited & Warrington Borough Council.

To request your free tailored home energy assessment and find out how you can save money and cut your energy bills call the Energy Saving Trust advice centre free on 0800 512 012.

Download the flyer and pass it onto your family and friends.

If your interested

Image: Cut the Carbon

Do you know how much money you can save on your bills by making simple energy savings changes?

Many of us just don’t know how much money we’re wasting every year – from PCs and monitors costing £40 a year to have switched on outside work hours when we don’t need them, to an inefficient fridge/freezer costing £50 more per year to run than an A rated one!

And then there’s the slightly bigger changes we can make which save us even more cash – for example – wall insulation can save £375 per year for a typical property.  To help you find out these and other savings, Warrington Borough Council, in association with Low Carbon Lymm, have produced a simple summary – click on the image to see it full size:

Main Image: Energy Detectives

Shelter said only eight out of the 323 local authorities in England had managed to provide enough affordable homes to meet demand during 2008-09. It added that 90% of councils had provided fewer than half of the homes they said were needed in their area during the year.

Councils are failing to meet affordable housing targets, Shelter said

Local authorities are responsible for identifying housing needs in their area and ensuring that the demand for them is met. Shelter has created a website to show how well councils are performing against their own analysis of housing needs.

It hopes the website will provide councillors and members of the public with straightforward information on the levels of housing that need to be provided to keep up with demand. The group plans to update its league table annually.

Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said: “We know that the recession has created a difficult climate for house building, but these figures clearly show that councils must work far harder to ensure more desperately needed affordable homes are provided if they ever hope to meet the housing needs of their local population.

“With 1.8 million households on housing waiting lists and more than one million children living in overcrowded homes it is unacceptable that only eight councils have provided enough affordable homes to meet local need.”

He added that with council budgets set to be slashed, it was important that all political parties made the provision of affordable housing a top priority.

The charity based housing need for an area on the council’s own assessment in its Strategic Housing Market Assessment or Housing Needs Study.

It then compared this with the average number of affordable homes that had been delivered during the past three years, according to figures produced by the Communities and Local Government department.

South Norfolk Council, Malvern Hills District Council, Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council and Warrington Borough Council were the top performing local authorities in terms of the provision of affordable homes, with all four councils producing more properties than they had assessed as being needed. But at the other end of the scale 81 councils had delivered only 10% or less of the homes they had said were needed, according to the group.