York families ‘recreating a village’ with help from community energy funding
York’s first housing co-operative will benefit from shared solar energy scheme with the support of the Hub-managed Community Energy Fund.
Families have recently begun to move into the Lowfield Green development of 19 sustainably built homes in Acomb, developed by the YorSpace co-operative as part of a resident-led housing scheme which will see neighbours share cars, food-growing space and support.
One of the next stages of the development will see them add a shared solar-energy scheme across the site, a project funded by the Great British Energy Community Energy Fund, managed locally by the North East and Yorkshire Net Zero Hub.
Laura Patrickson, one of the first to step inside her completed home, said:
“We talk about it being York’s first housing co-op. But really what we’re doing isn’t that new. It’s the way people used to live before people became much more socially mobile… so we’re kind of recreating a village.”
YorSpace is a community land trust – a non-profit organisation that owns and develops land for the benefit of the community.
The houses themselves have been built to modern, energy-efficient standards that residents expect will keep bills low, even during the recent cold weather.
For Laura, the difference is already clear. After years in colder properties, she said her new home is “lovely and toasty and warm, and it’s not really costing anything… we’ve only got two little radiators and we hardly need them because of the insulation and ventilation system.
A key feature of LGHC will be its upcoming shared solar-energy scheme. The residents’ co-operative has been working with York Community Energy and the North East & Yorkshire Net Zero Hub, which funded feasibility studies and helped secure further grants.
James Neward, co-founder of YorSpace said that the Hub’s involvement “has basically set us on a path to lowering our carbon footprint on a community level”, with plans for communal battery storage and locally owned solar panels.
The North East and Yorkshire Net Zero Hub is part of a network of five Local Net Zero Hubs in England directed and funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to support local areas with the development and delivery of local energy projects, and managed locally in a partnership of the six Combined Authorities of the North East and Yorkshire.
The Hubs have the mission of supporting the government’s ambition of a clean energy system by 2030, identifying and developing energy projects on behalf of the publicly-onwed energy company Great British Energy, and delivering the forthcoming Warm Homes Plan.
The Community Energy Fund was a national funding programme, managed locally by the Local Net Zero Hubs network which provided up to £140,000 funding to local organisations looking to develop projects which generate energy where it is needed and which local people benefit from. It has been succeeded by the Great British Energy Community Fund
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