Westmill Solar awards eight fully funded energy assessments for Wiltshire Village Halls

On 21st February 2024, Westmill Solar held a ‘Retrofitting and Energy Measures for Village Halls’ information event, to launch a new community benefit project in Wiltshire.

For several years Westmill Solar has funded a Community Buildings Energy Assessments scheme, run by the Low Carbon Hub, offering free energy assessments of community buildings to identify actions that they could take to reduce energy use. The aim is to help community buildings transition to a low carbon economy and improve their community spaces.

Originally available to community buildings in Oxfordshire, in recent years we have expanded eligibility to include community buildings within a 25-mile radius of the Westmill site, to include Westmill Solar’s neighbours within Wiltshire. This event extends that programme and provides support to village halls anywhere in Wiltshire.

Assessments are carried out by our partner Environmental Information Exchange (EiE), a non-profit unit at Oxford Brookes University. Practical recommendations are presented with estimated installation costs, financial savings and pay-back periods so that community buildings can prioritise which measures they would like to fund. The energy assessments were allotted to the first eight villages to submit applications.

Congratulations to the eight successful village halls. We look forward to working with them and following their progress. We hope to be able to provide more funding opportunities for community energy assessments in the future and help for organisations to implement the energy improvement measures recommended by the assessments.

The village hall representatives who attended the launch meeting, in person and online, heard from guest speakers from EiE, the Wiltshire Village Halls Association and Kington Langley Village Hall. The team at Kington Langley Village Hall also provided the venue and technical support for the event. Our philosophy is that greater community benefit can be achieved by co-operating with others.

As part of our guiding co-operative principles, Westmill Solar Co-operative is committed to supporting community organisations to provide benefit to their communities and championing the transitioning to a low carbon economy. Please do not hesitate to contact us at info@westmillsolar.coop if you would like to find out more.

Applications for this round of Energy Assessments are closed. We anticipate further funding being available in the future and we will update our Community Funding page when more information becomes available.