Friday 25 March 2011

Street Party for Royal Wedding 29th April 2011



We'd like to arrange a community street party for the Royal Wedding bank holiday of 29th April.

Please can we have some ideas and some support and decide whose organising the event.

The village green is favoured spot & not forgetting the Chamley Arms should be open by then.

Warcop school & nursery are desperately trying to raise funds for resources and a new classroom, so we wondered whether some proceeds might be able to be donate to this or some other village need.









Thursday 17 March 2011

Solar Panels

Julie went to the SEE (Sustainable Energy Eden) meeting last night and brought back a printed pack. Big thanks to her for giving up her evening - I was in London and couldn't make it back in time.

(Apparently, I'm not allowed to ask how much these bits of paper in the pack cost to produce, whether this is an environmentally friendly way of sharing info, or suggesting that it could all have been read online for micropennies on a website!)

How do we get involved with Sustainable Energy Eden?

Warcop is not in the Heart of Eden project area. We are Upper Eden. This is an invisible boundary, but we are working on getting our new hydro and renewable schemes involved in SEE. Watch this space! (Or the Herald next week)

We do have access to thermal cameras to see where your house is leaking heat, plus a new bulk buying scheme for solar panels, electricity, oil, underfloor heating etc.

If you are considering any form of carbon reduction solution, please contact WREG via Julie or Lindsey. We can help reduce your costs through the bulk buying scheme.

If every household in the village informed WREG of their buying plans for insulation, PVs, etc, we could negotiate better prices for you all.

Please, get in touch.

Monday 14 March 2011

Parish Council Meeting 14th March

Nice to see so many people at the Parish Council meeting - I counted 37, which is a great turn out.

Subjects covered included minutes from last meeting, a report from our District Councillor Willy Patterson (including the likely impact of cuts on services such as the buses), a report from the school,  the Highways report from Joyce, the Village Hall survey report (results due at the end of the month), WREG report from Julie, Appleby Fair discussion led by Roly Earl, details of the Chamley Arms plans by Phil Pepper, and the Parish Council elections to be held in May.

Some Councillors intend to stand down at this election, so anyone wishing to stand for the Parish Council needs to get hold of the required forms from Heidi.

The minutes will be made available shortly, and we will be updating the Parish Council area of the blog over the coming weeks with as much info as possible.

Warcop Action Group raise £2300 for local groups

Warcop Action Group has raised more than £2,300 for local good causes in 2010, and presented the local medical practice with a cheque for £600 at their latest fundraising event. Dr Alan MacDonald attended the coffee shop in the Village Hall to receive the cheque from WAG organisers Jean Hoyle, Elizabeth Atkinson and George Atkinson.

(As reported in the Eden Valley Messenger)

Monday 7 March 2011

WREG wins grant funding

Warcop Renewable Energy Group has been awarded grant funding by the Energy Savings Trust to look at the options available to the village for carbon savings schemes, a hydro scheme, biomass, carbon reduction on a public building, and various other potential solutions to generate electricity, save money on fuels, and use village assets (including land, buildings, water and trees). The work is ongoing as of today - a very quick, and reasonably painless, turnaround on grant funding!

This is great news, and luckily it was a lovely day today for wandering around with CORE looking at water courses, woods, village buildings, and talking about possible schemes.

We also discussed holding a short seminar for landowners and farmers to discover what options are available for us to work together to get the best feed-in tariffs, deals on equipment and so on.  More news on this shortly, and WREG will be at The Exchange on Saturday in Sandford if anyone would like to come and have a chat.

Saturday 5 March 2011

EVENT: Brough Farmer's Market


Saturday March 19th from 9.30am - 1pm in the Memorial Hall.

Please support the stallholders from our area.

Stock up on locally produced lamb, beef, pork, venison, ducks, eggs, and poultry. Cakes and quiches, fudge and chocolate, vegetables and cheese, jams and  chutneys. Plants, creams, a silversmith and more!

For more information,check out the Brough Farmer's market website.

EVENT: Warcop & Sandford Exchange

The next Exchange is Saturday 12th March from 10am -12pm in Sandford Institute.

These events are getting more and more popular as they become more established. It's a great opportunity to find out what is happening in the Parish and beyond, so don't miss out!

Warcop Renewable Energy Group



WREG have submitted an application to the Energy Savings Trust for grant funding to begin the process of investigating how we can achieve some of the ideas for Warcop. We hope to hear very shortly whether we have been awarded the grant funding.

Eden Broadband

A meeting was held on Thursday 3rd March in Kirkby Stephen with a rep. from the Broadband Delivery UK team (Mike Kiely from the DTI/BIS) to update everyone on the BDUK pilot project progress and to discuss next steps.

Tuesday 1 March 2011

Chamley Arms Update

Anyone interested in the plans for the pub has been invited to go and knock on the door to see and hear what is going on. The invitation has been issued by Phil Pepper through the Parish Council.

The aim is to get the pub doors open again as soon as possible. The date of April 1st has been suggested as a potential opening date (This is, we are assured, not an April Fool!)

Plans will be submitted to the Council for some changes to the building structure - more detail to follow.

As soon as one of the bloggers can track him down, we hope to publish an interview with Phil here.....

Warcop Renewable Energy Group Update

Update: 01.03.2011 We have just received an email regarding group purchase of oil and electricity by a village of 215 homes in Co. Durham. (i.e. not dissimilar to Warcop + Sandford).

The potential saving to the villagers by all buying oil and electricity together in that village would be £17,000 per annum in oil and £30,000 p.a. in electricity. This sort of cost saving would make a huge difference to all of us in the village and should be discussed by all of us at the next WREG meeting.

All WREG news can be found by clicking here