Member Article

Village hall warms to cash boost

The welcome at a village hall south of Shrewsbury will be even warmer thanks to a £1,000 grant.

Longnor Village Hall was awarded the money for insulation in the roof space from the Twemlows solar farm community benefit fund managed by Shropshire and Telford Community Energy (STCE).

The improved energy efficiency will significantly cut the village hall’s heating bill, helping to ensure the sustainability of the vital community building.

Dave Green, secretary of STCE, said: “We are very pleased to use our Community Benefit Fund to support important energy saving initiatives in this popular rural village hall.

“We can support schemes like this thanks to income from our solar farm at Twemlows. We are working towards a share offer this summer which will bring the solar farm into full community ownership. This will allow us to put even more funds back into the community to which we belong.”

Rose Aston, chair of the Longnor Village Hall committee, said: “We are enormously grateful to the Twemlows fund for the £1,000 they granted us to insulate the roof space in our village hall.

“We did the work ourselves – putting in 90 square metres of thick layers of Rockwool. It’s made a world of difference to the hall. We only have to put the heating on for an hour, then we can turn it off as the hall retains the heat.

“We also insulated below the floor. By doing both, the acoustics have significantly improved too.

“We’re a small community and it takes a lot to raise this kind of money. Thank goodness for the Twemlows community fund.”

STCE is a community benefit society which will launch its share offer for Twemlows solar farm later this summer. More information about the offer and the community benefit grants is available by signing up to the STCE newsletter through its website at https://stcenergy.org.uk/

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Melanie Boulter .