Explore National Lottery Community Fund Climate and Energy Fund opportunity

[sequencefree]

Next steps

• All to drop thoughts into NLCF Neighbourhood Warmth Stage 2 (Full Proposal) Questions and highlight areas in which we think partner input would be most useful.
• @sequencefree to read over Opportunity outline, dump thoughts and list potential joint applicants in 🤑 National Lottery Community Fund braindump 2023.
• @sequencefree to develop a brief to share with community engagement organisations.
• @sequencefree to digest https://www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/key-initiatives/climate-action-hub/stories
• @sequencefree to collate, contextualise and tag (based on whether they deliver home energy services and/or community engagement) in the potential collaborators in the Climate Stakeholders spreadsheet.
• @sequencefree to arrange bilateral meetings with prospective partners immediately below during second half of February to confirm named contact at each organisation, nail down a roll out plan and deliverables:
• Carbon Co-op
• Bath & West Community Energy
• Centre for Sustainable Energy
• Citizens UK
• Good Faith Partnership
• Community Energy Wales
• Community Energy Scotland
• @sequencefree to arrange bilateral meetings with prospective collaborators immediately below (engaged via The Climate Coalition) during first half of February to explore collaboration esp. via Warm Welcome campaign:
• Diocese or Exeter
• Diocese of Oxford
• EcoChurch
• Faith for the Climate
• Muslim Charities Forum
• @sequencefree to agree and approach the following potential joint applicants to discuss inclusion in Expression of Interest and document status here:

• Carbon Co-op – Met Matt Fawcett to discuss on 4 Dec and followed up with 🔋 Neighbourhood Warmth brief for Carbon Co-op_NLCF Climate and Energy Fund_Nov 2023. Meeting scheduled 15 Jan.
• HUBBUB – Interest expressed during meeting on 7 Dec 2023 and suggestion of follow-up meeting in January involving fundraising colleagues of both organisations. Lily said on 8 Jan: "Apologies for the delay in getting back to you, I wanted to touch base with the development team first. They’ve informed me they’re meeting next week to discuss priorities for applications this year and where to focus Hubbub efforts. Off the back of that call, they should be able to give me a steer on whether we can be involved in this opportunity. I’ve passed on your helpful application draft and I’ll give you an update as soon as I have it. If this means you need to go ahead with the February expression of interest don’t let us hold you up!"
• Changeworks – 2 x meetings re: this w/Morven, who is liaising internally and with EdinBRIC (key community engagement partner, as Changeworks primarily works in individualist paradigm).
• Warm Welcome campaign – David threw out a few collaboration options when we first met. Siôn since shared our NLFC brief and is meeting him again on 4 January to discuss how we could perhaps work together.
• Community Energy Wales Energy Efficiency working group – Siôn presenting in January.
• Bath and West Community Energy – Approached and nudged Pete Capener (who we met previously). Meeting on 11 Jan.
• Brighton & Hove Energy Services Co-operative (BHESCo) – Kayla's open to partnering on condition that we collaborate with the Centre for Energy Equality (who they're committed to working with). Siôn suggested dates for a meeting w/c 8 Jan.
• Community Energy Plus – Katharine Lewis replied: "Lovely to hear from you and thank you for thinking of us. Would you mind if I shared this with my fellow directors at Cornwall Climate Action Network? In my day job I work for an energy advice charity Community Energy Plus. Both my boss and I are CCAN directors, so home energy is something that gets discussed a lot at network meetings! We are already involved in a couple of CAF Energy bids so it may not be possible for us to get involved directly. But if this is the case, we might be able to suggest others that can, or give some useful feedback." Meeting booked on 8 Jan.
• Centre for Sustainable Energy – Interested and will share thoughts on challenges they might want to curate.
• Community Energy Scotland – Interested, checking on if possible to be involved directly beyond joining steering group.
• https://www.power.film/ – Dan replied: "I’m just not really the right person for that email so I forwarded it to Hilary. We have just been reject from 2 national lottery bids so we’re not really feeling very positive about them at the moment!"
• Centre for Energy Equality. – Open to partnership, Siôn drafting flowchart to share to explore how our work could be complementary. See call notes.
• Nottingham Energy Partnership –  Reply from Heather Ince: "I’m not sure if you are aware, but Greenmeadows is a heavily Climate Action funded initiative itself which could complicate straightforward proceedings as a lead partner, however, considering the matching nature of our initiatives I think it may well be worthwhile liaising with our CAF representative as to the idea of using the local evolution of Greenmeadows as an example of expansion from local to national using your digital platform? Green Meadows Projects — Green Meadows. This may be particularly useful considering that one of the elements of Green Meadows is the production of an ‘Energy Audit’ and launch of a website platform of the different housing archetypes in the Meadows and the relevant energy data and insulation measures/architectural instructions for works required to reduce energy use. In addition, Nottingham Energy Partnership, of which Green Meadows is an initiative, is also implementing a Heat Hub program Home Energy Advice Team — Nottingham Energy Partnership (nottenergy.com) which may also feed into this. I’d like to discuss more Siôn, and you can get me on 0115 9782028 or by reply, but in the meantime I’ll liaise with our CAF representative to explore options for our involvement in some form or other."
• https://www.omidaze.co.uk/ + Cardiff Council + https://rounded-developments.org.uk/ (+ other members of Community Energy Wales Energy Efficiency Working Group meeting) + Community Gateway + gentle/radical + https://womenconnectfirst.org.uk/ – Interest from Cardiff University Community Gateway | 2023-12-15 - Professor Mhairi McVicar, Project Lead + Siôn presenting to Community Energy Wales Energy Efficiency Working Group meeting on 11 Jan.
• Cara Naden – Interest expressed during this meeting and others but maybe dependent on energy strategy due end of January.
• West Midlands Combined Authority – Siôn approached and nudged.
• Greater South East Local Net Zero Hub – Siôn & Alice meeting Peter Gudde on 4 Jan 2024.
• Low Carbon Hub – Mairi Brookes replied: "I’ve taken a quick look and will circulate, but I think it’s unlikely that we could become involved at the moment. We’re pretty much swamped with two massive priorities: consolidating our business as we’ve grown (boring but essential stuff) and the pre-development phase of our Strategic Innovation Funding project with SSEN (which runs to March 24 and is hitting crunch time)."
• Transition Network – Emailed Mike. No response.
• People Powered Retrofit – Imogen replied: "Thanks for this - looks really interesting. At the moment I don't think we're in a position to accept partnership, we're already fairly heavily committed. Have you spoken to Carbon Coop? This sits quite neatly in their remit."
• Citizens Advice – Call on 7 Feb.
• SELCE
• Ovesco
• https://www.crewenergy.london/
• Futureproof
• Birmingham City Council
• CIVIC SQUARE
• https://www.nadderce.org.uk/
• https://plymouthenergycommunity.com/
• https://www.burnhamandwestonenergy.co.uk/
• https://copronet.wales/
• Friends of the Earth
• Centric Lab
• Grand Union Community Energy
• Loco Home Retrofit + Novoville – Novoville x Loco Home Retrofit | 2023-12-18 meeting felt as though they were steering us away from potential duplication, so partnership unlikely unless we pivot towards problems mentioned at the bottom of these call notes.

Background

• Opportunity outline
• Guidance to develop your full proposal for Climate Action Fund - Energy and climate
• Examples of projects likely to be funded.
• 🤑 National Lottery Community Fund braindump 2023
• Notes of The National Lottery Community Fund Climate Action Fund - Energy and Climate Theme Information Session - 2023-04-18
• 🔥 Neighbourhood Warmth concept doc_NLCF Climate and Energy Fund_Nov 2023
• Our Expression of Interest
• NLCF Neighbourhood Warmth Stage 2 (Full Proposal) Questions

[sequencefree]

@crowbot @zarino @emilyk383 @ashapond

After our meeting w/Changeworks | 2023-11-06 - Morven Masterton, Strategic Innovator and Service Lead...

I'm working on 🔥 Neighbourhood Warmth concept doc for Changeworks_NLCF Climate and Energy Fund_mySociety_Nov 2023 based on this strand of their work...

City focus – Trying to launch a project with Edinburgh City Council – met DM Labs via this – likely delivering a community engagement strategy for them in this financial year, then might be able to test different approaches to implementing that strategy, in a few different areas, next financial year.

So that we can structure our thoughts in a way that mirrors the Climate and Energy Fund's headings...

And try to share with Morven ahead of another possible call this Friday 10 Nov, along with an explanation that we're not sure we'll apply for the fund as we're awaiting a Lottery decision on a request for extension(?) to our current funding that would prevent us from applying to this if granted.

Grateful for a 👍 on this post if you're happy with that approach please!

[zarino]

@sequencefree sounds good to me, and I think that’s an ok summary of where we’re at re: Climate & Energy Fund.

[ashapond]

great to see all this project thinking and partnership preparation! just to clarify that we don't know whether having a current grant from NLCF means that we can't apply for another (CAF) grant - I've asked this in a few emails but haven't yet got a response (from Andriana in the CAF team). Will keep chasing!

[sequencefree]

TNLCF Andriana call notes 20 Nov 2023

[sequencefree]

@ashapond @alicewilliams36 @emilyk383 @zarino

Comments welcome on 1st draft of 🏠 Neighbourhood Warmth brief for potential partners_NLCF Climate and Energy Fund_Nov 2023.

Tried to trim, reduce jargon and generalise. But it's maybe light on what we'd expect from a community engagement organisation. There may be a tension because I think we'd ultimately like to find out if Neighbourhood Warmth could sort of stand on its own two feet without too much active community engagement, but I suppose we might discover that anyway if people start involving others organically. Lots of projects in this space seem to have community champions, so might be something to consider there. I'm going to try and speak to HUBBUB again soon and mine our call notes with them, as they've shared a fair bit of experience on this front and I'd like to double-check that they're not planning to carry on working in this area. Call notes FYI:

1. [HUBBUB call notes folder](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SNk7b3ig9k7pTMFJz8QUT4z7zonZLHyV?usp=drive_link
2. )
3. HUBBUB x mySociety x Dark Matter Labs x BHESCo – rolling agenda for catchup calls

Also instead of keeping the area scale question wide open as suggested in my email (pasted below), I've hinted at smaller-scale definitions of "areas" as I suspect the concept of place-based community is more meaningful at those levels in this context.

For simplicity's sake and given the time we have to get partners on board I'm thinking that we'd ideally partner with one home energy services supplier and one community engagement organisation that can both work in all three areas during the two years.

@alicewilliams36 Realise this contrasts with your suggestion of "3+ names of community partners in different areas of the UK" – assuming you're thinking quite far-flung areas! If we go down that route I think we might need to partner with an equivalent number of home energy services suppliers or one or two that span a fairly wide area e.g. https://www.futureproof.uk.net/our-services/ Could be tricky to find both types of partners in overlapping places, in the quantity we'd ideally like! And I suppose we risk herding cats if we have 7 partners in total!

Anyway, three areas is somewhat arbitrary but based on HUBBUB's experience I think it's a reasonable level of ambition and given Andriana seemed interested in their work I figure it's a sensible level at which to pitch.

There are placeholders and estimates in the document above (under the Outcomes sections) that may be somewhat dependent on where we work, what sort of supply of home energy services is available there and what challenges we encourage teams to tackle. Something we can firm up with partners I imagine.

I'll start adding to the checklist in the description of this ticket and trying to arrange calls while we finalise this document. Assuming I'll be the only essential attendee but please let me know if you'd like to join calls as essential or optional.

Ta!

Thanks Alice!

Happy to develop a brief.

One complication I'm anticipating is that we might now need viable partnerships to include a provider of home energy services + community engagement groups, and that the latter need to operate within the service deliver area of the former.

Partnering with Changeworks is attractive because:
they're big enough that we could theoretically expand from 1 local authority area in year 1, to 3 areas in year 2.
they have at least one relationship with a community engagement group (EdinBRIC).
That said, I think they managed our expectations about scaling their whole house retrofit service by suggesting that the supply chain doesn't exist outside of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

To maximise potential partners I wonder if we should hyperlocalise the thinking in 🔥 Neighbourhood Warmth concept doc for Changeworks_NLCF Climate and Energy Fund_Nov 2023 so that we're working in 1 neighbourhood area (apprx. 30k people) in year 1, then scaling to 3 neighbourhood areas in year 2?

If we were to take that approach I think it opens the door a bit wider to partner with individual organisations that deliver home energy services and community engagement e.g. community energy organisations that may only operate in one local authority area.

Will make a start and keep this question somewhat open for now but just wanted ton share my thinking in case I set off in an unhelpful direction. Assuming that sounds sensible I'll add a link to a draft brief to this ticket and build up the list of potential partners there too: Explore National Lottery Community Fund Climate and Energy Fund opportunity

Thanks!

Siôn

[sequencefree]

By 26 Feb – Follow-up meetings with partners for NLCF bid.

[sequencefree]

By 8 Mar – Add thoughts to Stage 2 doc.