Visit to Nottingham Energy Partnership
Nottingham Energy Partnership (NEP) is a climate change and fuel poverty charity working across Nottinghamshire. They share CA-WN’s aims of reducing carbon emissions, increasing resilience and lessening reliance on fossil fuel.
On our visit we were welcomed by their Chief Executive Officer, Miranda Cumberbatch, their former CEO Philip Angus and Darren Barker, NEP’s Home Improvement and Contracts Manager. They very generously gave up an entire afternoon to explain the charity’s history, how their work is being funded and how they are helping both their immediate community and neighbouring authorities.
Their approach is generally educational. At local street level they leaflet to make everyone aware of their services - providing advice on how best to future-fit homes, how to make use of renewable energy and how to secure grants and subsidies through available funding streams.
At their operational base in Nottingham’s Meadows district, they run workshops on everything from outlining what a home ‘retrofit’ project entails through to hands-on skills training for tradespeople and DIYers; basic plumbing, bricklaying, lime plastering, even how to fit insulation in a full-scale model loft. To support local home improvers there’s a tools library for anyone needing to borrow DIY tools.
For the over 60s, and for families with young children, NEP works with local service providers to offer a tool kit of measures designed to improve residents’ health and wellbeing. With partner organisations they supply free and subsidised home insulation, heating upgrades and renewable technologies to make inefficient homes more affordable to run, fit for the future and less impactful on the environment.
We were shown round a current house renovation project that’s providing volunteers with really useful, confidence-building practical building experience. Taking a ‘fabric-first’ approach the house has been gutted to its basic shell. The floors have been retained but cut back to reveal the full height inside face of the outer walls so they can be fully insulated before making any other improvements.
It’s been estimated that 100,000 households in West Northamptonshire could need some kind of intervention to lessen their wintertime energy use. What we saw in Nottingham was a worked example of a community, under expert guidance, taking steps to cut energy costs, reduce emissions and improve home comforts. That’s something we need to action right here, right now.
Do use the comments box below if you know of anyone keen to get involved with retrofit in West Northamptonshire villages or towns.