We are delighted to announce that just before Christmas we learnt of some great news for both TTT and for Totnes.  On december 19th TTT was announced as one of 10 communities across England and Wales to be chosen as a 'Low Carbon Community', and awarded £625,000, specifically for a project called 'Transition Streets'.  You can read more about the grant, and about the Transition Streets proposal here.  The announcement was made at the TTT Christmas party on Friday evening (thanks to everyone who came for making it such a great evening), you can see the moment the announcement was made here. 

The news has appeared in most of the local press, including in an extraordinary editorial in the Western Morning News entitled 'Hippy Town Comes of Age', which includes the following, "in an interesting twist to the climate change debate, communities and individuals once seen as quaintly idiosyncratic for their way-out views have now become mainstream and may yet provide some of the answers to the biggest questions we all face.  Totnes, which has been drawing free-thinkers with serious concerns about the environment for decades, now appears to have a concentration of like-minded individuals in the right place at the right time".  It does also assert that Totnes is renowned for its 'soap carving', something I have to say that in my time here has thus far passed me by.  It also featured heavily on BBC Radio Devon this morning (the bid that is, not soap carving). 


So, almost immediately we are upwards and onwards...  The whole application for the LCCC was on an incredibly tight and punishing deadline, and even though we have made it through, the punishing deadlines continue!  We are looking to pull together a Project Management Team who will turn Transition Streets into a reality across the town. We are looking for people with some or all of the following skills; project design, evaluation, development, implementation, media management and communications, budget accountability, management of contracts with suppliers/funders, managing partnerships, organisational skills, recruiting and managing Transition Streets teams, reviewing and evaluating the Transition Streets teams and fundraising.  The deadlin for the applications os now past, but if you would like, in a voluntary capacity, to offer any of the above, please send your CV to transitionstreets@googlemail.com accompanied by a letter saying how you feel you might be able to contribute to the project as it is set out below.

In Brief: What is 'Transition Streets'? (taken from our application form).

Transition Town Totnes (TTT) is a community-led organisation which has inspired an international movement of communities exploring responses to climate change.  Following extensive community consultation, TTT has produced the first ‘Energy Descent Action Plan’ (EDAP) and this LCCC project will contribute significantly to its implementation.  Because of the many changes already underway in Totnes we are applying to be first movers.

‘Transition Streets’ has 4 stages.

1. Behaviour Change: to support deep cultural and behavioural change, TTT will initially select 15 streets, involving a minimum of eight households from a wide cross section, to participate in our successful programme, Transition Together. This programme, designed to inspire practical change at the community level, successfully piloted in Totnes, offers quantifiable reductions in energy consumption, food, transportation, water and waste.  This ensures households have achieved all affordable reduction measures and have the intrinsic motivation and social support to take them to the next stage.
2. Energy Efficiency: on commencing Transition Together, householders will fill in the Home Energy Check form provided by the Energy Savings Trust (EST) and receive a bespoke home energy audit. They will apply for highly subsidised energy efficiency measures through our partnership with South Hams District Council’s (SHDC) ‘Cosy Devon’ scheme, overseen by Energy Action Devon (EAD), including loft and cavity wall insulation, and in some cases, secondary glazing and external wall cladding. EST will provide us with baseline and completion data for the research element of this part of the project.
3. Renewable Energy: one participant from each Transition Street will complete training in assessing suitability for household microgeneration, offered by Devon Association for Renewable Energy (DARE), and participants’ houses will be assessed. If houses are suitable for solar PV we will offer £3000 towards solar PV installations along with significant savings on the unit cost of systems due to bulk purchase and upfront payment to a solar PV installer. For low income households SHDC will offer further grant aid and low interest loans through their partnership with Wessex Reinvestment Trust. Houses not suitable for PV will be encouraged to consider alternative forms of microgeneration.  DARE will provide before-and-after energy data for each house as part of the research element of the project.
4. Community Awareness: Totnes Civic Hall is central to life in the town. In partnership with Totnes Town Council (TTC), SHDC and Devon County Council (DCC) we propose an energy retrofit of this building with our matchfunding to the tune of £50,000 to provide solar PV. The savings thus generated will be used to support further projects, with a public digital display showing the significant energy savings being made. In addition, ‘Open Streets’ event will showcase some of the upgraded houses so that the public can see what the project has achieved.

This model of educating and empowering people to decide for themselves how best to decarbonise their lives is one with huge implications for how Government tackles climate change in communities, offering genuinely bottom-up engagement coupled with ongoing behaviour change.