 Yeah we got 17 so far so that's fine. Well good evening everybody, and it's lovely to have you here, even though we've got this lovely weather which is a bit rare, but of a nice barmy evening anyway. As I said lovely to have you here I'm going to run through a little bit of housekeeping. How we're going to manage this zoom meeting and it's a workshop so how we are going to manage the zoom workshop. First of all, just to let you know that this is being recorded, and please do let us know if you have any problems about this being recorded. There will be a chance for Q&A later on in the workshop. If you don't want to be brought out to speak, you can just have your question written. So, but this will be recorded and can be used later. We'll start as I say now, we're going to have about half an hour of presentations and we'll run through those presentations. And they've got a lovely logic and we have some wonderful speakers here as you can see lined up. And at the end of that half an hour, we'll then have the rest of the meeting for an interactive Q&A. And how will we run this? We're going to use, as this is a Zoom webinar, you'll see at the bottom of your screen, you'll see that there are two different controls that we're going to use. The chat function, which you can see on your left hand side, the chat function is for you to chat. It's to express an opinion. It's to share something that you've thought of while somebody's speaking, perhaps it's for networking. So the chat can just run on and you're talking amongst yourselves while paying lots of attention, obviously to our wonderful speakers, but that's the chat function that's going on. On the right hand side, we have the Q&A and the Q&A function is only for questions. And that way that helps us to see what are the specific questions that aren't lost amongst the traffic in the chat function. So you press on the Q&A button and you type in your question that you would like to give. Now, the lovely thing about this is while people are speaking and a question occurs to you, you can just type it into the Q&A. We've also got a sort of a democratic system, so to avoid duplication of questions, but also to give us an idea of what you think are the most interesting and relevant questions, is that you can press the like icon there against the questions that you think are really interesting. And in that way, all questions will still remain, but the ones that get most likes will sort of move up to the top. And as chair then, I'll know which ones to ask first of all. And that's our housekeeping. And I've got a little bit of an introduction to this evening that we have together here for the Zero Carbon Communities Grant. And the session is about how to write successful grant applications for our zero carbon community grants. But first of all, I'd just like to sort of recall how lovely it is to have you all here, especially after we've just come through this really difficult time with the pandemic, with COVID-19, when in a way we've all been isolated for so long and we're just starting to break out again. But it has been a tough time, a tough time for many people. And that might be through illness. It might be through being locked down and juggling all the responsibilities at home. It may be through financial troubles, maybe even dealing with stress and anxiety of loved ones and loneliness perhaps and being kept apart from people we love. So it has been a really, really difficult time. But we do need to also celebrate something that we have seen and that's the resurgence of a community spirit and what we can call community resilience. And community resilience is something which is talked about and studied hugely around the climate and ecological emergency. How we can become stronger and more resilient communities in the face of the huge uncertainty and the changing climate and what that will mean for our lives and for our children's lives. And so what we've seen is throughout South Cams are the emergence of a social infrastructure of street coordinators, of people providing food, collecting prescriptions, helping out with little tasks, finding out perhaps who on the street may be unable to help themselves, may be lonely, giving an extra word, a phone call. And that huge, amazing infrastructure that we've seen happening in all of the villages is just fantastic. And we've also seen something that we didn't imagine a couple of years ago is the disruptive shift in our behaviour, which was imposed upon us because of the lockdown. So we saw a disruptive shift in terms of our travelling patterns, our commuting patterns, in the use of the car, in the use of public transport. We've seen disruption in terms of our office working and the move towards working from home and going digital instead of the massive car journeys, train journeys, flights around the world. We've also seen disruption in terms of how we source our food and being understanding of finding locally sourced products because we haven't been able to go into the larger shops and we've looked more at the digitalisation of that and many pop-up businesses which have come closer to home as well with that entrepreneurial spirit. And hugely, we've seen the importance of green space, of wild open space to our mental and physical health and the fact that there is a terrible, awful inequality in our own communities around South Cambridgeer in terms of access, easy access to that green space, which is so, so critical, especially when you're in lockdown. And work that we've been doing in terms of planning at the moment has shown that South Cambridgeer is the poorest area in the country in terms of biodiversity and tree canopy cover. And that's not great if we're looking at things like our climate and ecological emergency, about the natural habitat around us and the role that that plays both for absorbing carbon and making us healthy. So, while these cause difficulties, they also shifted behaviour patterns so fast, accelerated trends that were already happening, that we need to look now at which one of those do we want to lock in, keep, because they're actually good for society and how do we keep them if we want to? And how do we keep and build on that community spirit so that the behaviour change, we're doing it together in a supportive way. And that's why the Zero Carbon Community Grants Fund is so crucial that it's happening now and we timed it to sort of make it that we were in the period where we're coming out, we can come together and talk like this and you can meet as you're starting to design your grant applications. But you'll see that there is a greater emphasis this time on the evaluation criteria around the community engagement, because it's that behavioural change that we need moving all together towards a Zero Carbon lifestyle, much of which we've started to just see in what's happened to us over the last year and a half. So, I would like now to take you to Emma Dyer, who is our real host for this evening, but I will be chairing the proceedings and the chat and Q&A. But Emma, if you'd like to take us now through the agenda. Thank you, Pippa. As Pippa said, I'm Emma Dyer and I work at South Cams District Council as a Climate and Environment Project Officer and I oversee the Zero Carbon Communities Grant scheme. So today's workshop is a chance to learn about our grants, understand what we are looking for during the scoring process and hopefully provide you with some useful tips to go home with. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions at the end via the Q&A session, as Pippa said. So, before I go on, I'd like to introduce our speakers who have kindly joined us today. I was delighted to be joined today by two guest speakers, Sally Page from CCVS and also Cheryl Cousins from the Gambling Eco Community Group. Sally will provide a more in-depth look at how you can pick up extra points and give some expert advice when writing grant applications. Cheryl, from Gambling Eco Community Group, secured funding round one of our grants and she will provide some background on her project and her plans for this year. After our presentations, we will happily answer any questions you may have. So, the Zero Carbon Community Grant scheme's aims are summarised in this slide. As you can see, the scheme 1 supports communities to promote behavioural change and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. 2, it aligns with our aspiration for net zero carbon by 2050 in our zero carbon strategy. 3, has a £100,000 total budget. So, if you look at our funded projects so far in the table, you'll see that in the final column, 40 applications received in the first year, slightly more in the second year, and funding has been awarded to a total of 36 projects. I've included the breakdown in terms of types of projects. So, as you can see, there are lots of applications for community building projects that, unless they were imaginative in how their project was going to engage the community, they didn't get funded. So, the success rate for projects to encourage cycling and tree planting obviously was a lot better for those years too. So, in the next slide, you should be able to see some examples of the projects that we've already funded. Starting in the top left-hand corner, we have the Orchard Park Shared Electric Cargo Bike, which provides sustainable transport for families in the new settlement of the Orchard Park on the edge of Cambridge. It has also recently proved useful in providing transport for community litter picks. This is one of 12 projects encouraging cycling, which we have funded, including a couple of electric bike subsidised rental schemes. You can see the launch of one in Great Abington in the top centre, and you can see Pippa nicely in the middle of that one. We also funded a project to promote the National School Streets Initiative in our district. This sets up temporary road restrictions outside schools, and we also funded a couple of initiatives to teach people to repair their bikes, and various projects provide cycle paths and parking. The bottom middle photo shows some of the recently installed cycle racks at Milton Country Park by Milton's cycling campaign. He'll be planning to install many more racks in other Kelo locations. In the bottom left, we have a tree and hedge planting initiative in Campbell, another of our new settlements, this one involving the school, and bottom right shows a tree being planted by the Histon and Impington Trees Action Group. In total, 1,000 trees and 750 metres of hedges will be planted. Tree planting for carbon sequestration has proved very popular, and we have funded 14 of these initiatives. It's the conversations leading to these types of projects, which are really valuable. In the picture in the top right shows Eccleton Village Hall, his inefficient lighting was replaced with low energy equivalents. Their Village Hall Open Day explained their aim to be greener, so when we fund energy improvements for community buildings, this is the kind of engagement we want to see, a village event where people can come and find out what they can do in their own homes in their own lives. Next slide. This summarises the key information on this year's grants. If you have a look at it, if you please note that the deadline is earlier than in rounds one and two on Friday the 30th of July, and the next slide is all about who can apply. So it's, as previously, any non-profit organisation or parish council can apply. You'll need to be based in South Cambridgeshire, but if you're based outside you can still apply, but your project will need to benefit South Cambridgeshire residents. So just some examples of non-profit organisations. We have registered charities, companies limited by guarantee, unincorporated associations or clubs, community interest companies, charitable incorporated organisations, community benefit societies, social enterprises, established voluntary sector organisations or community shops which are non-profit making. So this year we'll be breaking the grant down into three streams. So we have community buildings, nature and our other category. Community buildings and nature were the most popular with our applicants last year so we wanted to include these again but also provide an extra smaller category for other bold and ambitious projects which meet our objectives to a high standard. So now on to the objectives. We will be scoring on how your project achieves the following. The first objective. Here it is really important to consider the wider community engagement aspect of your project and ensure that this is more than just publicity but something that will help to promote behaviour change and reducing carbon emissions. For example, how has the community been involved in drawing up these proposals? What plans are there for community involvement in the project in the future? What difference will the project make to your community? How many adults and children volunteers will be involved in the project? How will your project inspire and encourage others to do similar projects? The second objective is the reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere. This needs to be measurable in some form. So this could this could be an estimate but we would expect some form of explanation as to how you arrived at your answer. If you're applying for funding through our nature theme you will also need to include how you will be providing new or enhanced habitats for wildlife. And finally additional value. This could include funding contributions or contributions in kind of the future. For example, volunteer time or expertise from other sources. Collaboration between organisations or evidence of local or member support. We would like to stress that part funding from other organisations will be taken into consideration especially if you're requesting more than £5,000. It is important to also note that due to the number of applications we're expecting to receive competition will be high and we will be unable to fund all projects. For that reason we'd like to highlight to not assume that submitting an application will result in funding. And the next slide if we go I'm going to go through each of the three themes. So this is the community building theme. In our community building theme we'll be interested in funding improvements to community buildings to reduce the need for fossil fuel energy. So for example grid, electricity, gas or oil. We will prioritise improvements which take a whole building approach which take into account the energy hierarchy as shown on the slide. This ranks the stages on which on the way to using less energy in a building. We will also be prioritising improvements that have already been recommended on the energy survey. So energy conservation measures could include draft proofing, insulation of walls, ceilings, roofs, floors and pipes and the replacement of doors and windows. Energy efficiency measures could include lighting upgrades, smart heating control units or infrared heating. And then when the solar PV and all the battery storage system for solar PV is important that you show that feasible energy conservation and energy efficiency measures have already been undertaken or you have a plan to undertake these. So example is the funding by savings from the solar PV scheme. So we will prioritise schemes where a significant proportion of electricity generated will be used on sites either through daytime use of the building or through battery storage. With our community building applications we'd like to stress that only those applications that include a community engagement aspect will score the most points. It's about more than just improving the energy efficiency of a building. For example, Willingham Parish Council received £13,142 in the last round to install infrared heating panels in their village hall. This is known to many of you as Plowman Hall. There will be increasing awareness of the energy savings in buildings to the wider community through the Willingham News which is delivered free to every household. Plus we have plans to hold an exhibition in the local library and events in their low energy refurbished village hall. So onto our nature theme. With our nature theme we are looking to fund a variety of tree planting and other nature-based solutions to help combat climate change and increase biodiversity. Consideration will be given to projects which capture CO2 from the atmosphere or prevent its release whilst at the same time creating or restoring natural habitats. And some examples you could consider here could be the planting of a landmark tree in a small space, planting of a small tree population, community orchard projects, a community tree nursery projects, community allotment projects, the creation or enhancement of a community nature area, a small-scale restoration of peatland or a hedge or larger village-wide tree canopy projects. With our other projects category you can devise your own projects. Of interest to us are bold, ambitious and imaginative projects that are able to fulfil given objectives to a high standard. Here examples could include community initiatives and events that promote sustainable lifestyle choices, improvements to cycling infrastructure, a project to promote cycling or any waste reduction projects. So the application process. This is a little bit more about what we're looking for. So we've made the application process easier. Guidance will also be provided in the help buttons next to the questions on the application form. You have an option to choose one of our options or devise your own projects and you can apply for more than one project and if you'd applied to us before and been awarded funding you're more than welcome to apply again this year. All projects will need to meet the objectives as stated in our guidance document. So just a few reminders before you apply. Please take your time and read the guidance notes which includes the objectives already mentioned. Please remember that part funding is looked upon favourably, especially in the case of projects asking for over £5,000. If you are seeking less than £1,000 we would encourage you to apply to the community chest and lastly we are more than happy to discuss your project with us with you. If you think that would help. So you could email us at the email address given which is zcc at scams.gov.uk. Alternatively we can put you in contact with the previous applicant who has given their permission to offer any advice. So here's details of the webpage where you can see our guidance notes, apply now button and a link to all our previously funded projects. So once the deadline has been reached we'll aim to inform our applicants of their success within two months. Just be aware that we will also require a brief end of project reports. This is typically after about a year we sort of say that the grant you have basically a year to complete the project and the report have to outline the impact of the project and any lessons learnt and further information. Here are mine and Siobhan's contact details and thank you for listening. Just one thing we just had a request would you be able to just go back to the nature's slide? Yes. And just make one yes just the the types of projects. So people thought it was a bit quick so they could just sort of have a chance to yes of course and I think the slides will be shared won't they? They will be yes that's right. So I think Siobhan have you gone back to that one? Yes she has. So these are just some of the examples so if I just run through those again we've got the planting of a landmark tree in a small open space, the planting of a small tree population so if you've got a small little area that you want to plant some trees in, a community orchard project or a community tree nursery project, community allotment project, creation or enhancement of a community nature area, small scale restoration of peatland or a hedge or larger village wide re canopy project. Is that okay? That's perfect thank you very much. That's very good. Okay so thanks for listening I'll now hand over to Sally from CCBS who will run through her tips for making successful grant applications. Thank you very much Emma. So hello everyone, lovely to be here this evening and so just to introduce myself a little bit again my name's Sally I'm a development worker for the CCBS which is the Cambridge Council for Voluntary Service and so just in case you're not familiar with us we have a registered charity set up to kind of champion and support community and voluntary groups and we also promote volunteering across Cambridge City, South Cambridge and Finland and so today I'm going to talk you through some tips for making a successful grant application and this should be helpful for the zero carbon communities grant programme but also you know for other funders if you've got other ideas up your sleeve then that should be helpful and as we said earlier please do pop questions in the Q&A so that I can answer them later on in the evening and at the end of my presentation I'll also share my contact details and give you a little bit more information about the CCBS and how we might be able to help you as a group or as an organisation. Okay so if I go on to my first slide and so I think really first thing first if you're thinking of applying for funding is really to get to grips with you know what is your project and so this slide might look like lots of questions but it's really important to kind of develop your project idea before finding that funder and putting all the work into an application and so hopefully these kinds of questions will help you kind of get to that point where you can give an elevator pitch about your project so you want to be able to talk to a stranger for two minutes and for them to get a really good idea about you know what your project is and why it needs to happen and why you think it should happen now as well and so what I'll do is just talk through these questions a little bit and hopefully that will get your cogs turning and you'll have lots of ideas after this evening and so first of all and really importantly what is the problem and what is the solution and so really this is you kind of explaining what the issue is that you want to address with your project and this will help you explain the need for your project say to a funder and and it will help you kind of think about why you can explain that your project is the best solution to that problem and link to this is kind of is there demand so can you show that other people want this project to happen so that might be other people in your community can you collect proof of that so maybe statistics or support letters from those people saying that this project is a really good idea and they want to see it go ahead so basically you're making your case to the funder as to why this project is the best solution and then the next point is who will be involved in the project so what will they do how will they do it and with this kind of carbon grant program it links to you know if you're involving in school or families and activities so really being able to explain who will be involved what will the project do so this is kind of the nuts and bolts I suppose and how will your project be delivered and what will happen and when will that happen so you do want to start thinking about the project timetable how long do you think it's going to take and just making sure that you're giving yourself enough time in the planning to achieve what you want to achieve and that takes me to the next point so this is really thinking about what will change as a result of the project and again this is really building on your kind of case for investment why somebody should fund you and this bit sounds a little bit of funder jargon so just bear with me and I will explain but first of all you can think about you know what your project will do which is often called the kind of output and the outcomes that will be achieved as a result which is the change so really it's kind of if you think of a bike rack as an output so it's a thing and then the change might be as a result of having that thing and people might be living healthier lives because they're cycling to the shops rather than driving and so you've made that change as a result of your project it's just trying to get your head around that again building that case for investment and the next point is how will you measure impact so how will you show the funder that your project's doing what you said it would so this is thinking about the delivery of the project and how you'll want to evaluate what you're doing and it's really good to think about that earlier on because then you can build it into your application and make sure that you've got the funding that you need in order to do that well and this kind of scale of this will really depend on your project the bigger projects will need more and resource behind this and the smaller ones less so what resources do you need and so I think with this just really keeping in mind that it's not just money or kind of stuff and this one's touched on before with Emma and thinking about if there's staff needed or if there's volunteers that will be needed to deliver the project you know where will you get them from what will they be doing and what costs might they need to be involved in the project so with volunteers it's often kind of expenses or some money to kind of put on a thank you event for them at the end of the project and then this might sound a bit in the horizon but what will happen once you've spent the grant so I think this is really thinking about you know the future if for example there's some physical changes or things are being installed through your project you know who's going to look after them in the long term will there be ongoing costs for example and if so how will these be met that will be a the question that funders will ask you and it might be that in order to answer that you want to form a partnership or that you'll need to think about kind of raising funds later on down the line and so it's just making sure that you're happy with that and you're taking on something that's manageable for you okay so that's probably got your head spinning a little bit but hopefully you've got lots of ideas and so you've got your lovely project and now you're thinking about getting ready to apply and so first things first would be kind of who will fund your project and hopefully from today you know the zero carbon communities program is a really perfect match for you but I did just want to mention that there's support temperature which is a website that hosts an online search engine for finding funders and it's really really helpful so if today you think oh actually this isn't the perfect fit where I've got other ideas do have a look and we at the CVS can also help with funding and but I'll mention that more at the end and I think it's worth mentioning here that you know there might be more than one funder that matches your project or maybe matches a little bit but it's just really good to stay focused you know think about what works for your funder for your project and make sure you find the funder that matches that and then you know you can get going on your application so the next point on this slide is you know what does the funder need from you so this is really about kind of getting organised getting those practical things together so that you meet the minimum criteria that the funder asks for and you really don't want to miss out because of the technicality and often funders won't come back to you say if you miss a document that you were meant to upload or you don't quite meet the criteria in some particular way so do double check the list on the slide and tell us you some of the documents that you're very likely to need and for this particular grant program you know you'll be checking the guidance about that like Emma's gone through earlier but here are just some examples so they'll ask you to be constituted have a bank account in the name of the group and accounts and have all the appropriate permissions relevant partnerships in place and key policies in place which might be things like health and safety or safeguarding so I think my advice is if you're looking at that list and you think oh gosh no we're not ready yet we're not there yet as a group or organisation you can contact us at the CCVS and we can help with getting you all set up but if you see that and you're you know you're there and that all looks familiar really it's just about making sure everything's up to date everything's to hand and then when you move on to the next stage you know it's easy for you to get your application in to the grant program you're interested in and so if you move on to writing the application which is the next slide and so you've got your project idea you found your perfect funder you've got all your documents kind of up to date and ready and then you move on to the application form and so this can be a little bit daunting but hopefully these kind of top tips will help you through that process and again would apply generally across the board to different funders and so the first one read the guidance and talk to the funder so Emma's already said you know please do get in touch and ask questions and you know all funders have guidance to accompany their grant programs and so do dig that out and don't be a stranger make sure you ask the questions it will save you time and make sure that you're applying to a fund that you know suits your idea and with the guidance you know have it next to you get your highlighters out make sure you're really using it so that it will support you when you are answering all the different questions that the funder needs you to answer so my next point is use clear writing style and be concise and so I suppose this is really just to kind of highlight that the person reading your application will have lots of applications to read they'll have criteria to assess your application against and basically you want to make it as easy as possible for them to kind of understand who you are and why your project should be funded by them so using clear language using headings if you can bullet points if you can keeping to the word count and I suppose not seeing the word count as a target so if it's 500 words you don't always need to write 500 words but just make sure you're getting your point across as clearly as you can and I think that's a really good step and so the next point answer the questions this might sound a little bit odd but really all I mean by this is you know don't skip bits that you unless you meant to you're meant to and if your funder's asking you something it's really because they want to hear about it so an example is if one of the objectives is getting funding for your project to raise awareness of the environment you know make sure you give clear examples of how your project will do that and rather than just saying it will just try and elaborate and explain how your project will meet the objectives that they're asking for whichever touched on a little bit before as well and the next is find a critical friend and I think this can be really really helpful you know great writing grant applications can take time you know you're likely to be really invested in your project and it's easy to miss out on the basics so just assume that the person reading the application doesn't know anything about you and they'll only be able to use the information that you give them and so get someone who doesn't know the project to read it for you before you submit and really if they can read your application understand what you want to do and can see that you've not kind of missed information out that means it doesn't really make much sense then you're off to a good start but I definitely recommend that the next point is make sure the budget adds up and again there's kind of links to the critical friend having someone there to read things through with you and but also just making sure you're including all the costs that you'll need to deliver your project and don't be tempted to under cost your project because then that might look a bit risky the funder might not be sure as to how you'd actually deliver it and keep things in mind like partnership funding which Emma mentioned before so getting a little bit of money from somewhere else to go into your project and that does help to show that other people support what you're looking to do and you've thought through your different options as well and then the last bit is just check and check again so I guess this kind of links to all of the different things that I've said here but you know don't do this on your own don't be a lone soldier and have a little team behind you you'll need them if you're delivering the project later on so do you know enlist people to help you with writing your application and if I was going to the last slide so this is just a quote from Helen Keller so she was an author activist lecturer and she said oh alone we can do so little together we can do so much so I think this is just a reminder to talk to people you know talk to the funder talk to your community talk to organisations like the CCVS and it would help you plan your project and then find the right funder and then in turn put in a good quality application and as Emma said yeah thank you very much yeah that's lovely thank you thank you Sally and that was really useful I'd now like to hand over to Cheryl Cousins from the Gamelin Gate Eco Community Group thank you for inviting me this evening I'm Cheryl Cousins chairperson for Gamelin Gate Eco Community Group and we applied to South Cambridge here for funding for the zero carbon community grant in round one and we were successful put this to the next slide group please that'd be great so the community group was set up to raise awareness of environmental impact and to encourage a community to make better informed decisions to reduce their carbon footprint so we had a couple of key aims one was to help the community of Gamelin Gate use less single use plastic and to help the community learn more about what they can and cannot recycle in their area so it really where did the actual group come from well it was really born out of an idea between myself and a friend and we're very much concerned about the how much plastic single use plastic is used and we wanted to try and make a difference and we really didn't know where to start and when we saw the funding advertised we thought that's something we could could apply for so we had nothing we had no group set up at all so we literally had to set up the Gamelin Gate Eco Community Group get a bank account constitution together policies and procedures in place all what Sally was talking about and actually we found it quite a simple process to do and we had the idea about trying to use less single use plastic and had some ideas around that so as part before we actually sat down and put pen to paper and filled out the application form we obviously read all the guidance and we had our ideas but we still didn't know if it was going to be a fit so we actually had a meeting met with South Cambridgeshire District Council for MR and a colleague and actually sounded out our ideas and what they thought of them and whether that was something that would be suitable. We're very much we're keen on doing community engagement so because someone put one to the next slide and we can talk about how we did that. So we had an idea that what we wanted to do was have a monthly pop-up eco shop. We wanted to use the funding to purchase non-plastic alternatives to products so things like alternative mouthwashers, dog poo bags, shampoo bars rather using plastic bottle shampoos and to be able to give this out to the community. So we plan to have a monthly pop-up shop in the Gammagate Eco Hub. Unfortunately we were all systems ready to go and had it cancelled due to Covid and the various lockdowns but we are planning to still go ahead with that next month. In the meantime what we have been doing is we set up a Facebook page for our community where we engage with our community through that. So we try and highlight alternatives to single use plastic. We have Waste Not Wednesdays so someone who lives in the village will say I've got a cabbage left in my fridge today. Anybody got any ideas or how I can use that? Everyone has been chipping in with different recipe ideas so that's been great. We've been using our local communication so in Gammagate we have a gazette that goes out once a month so we've been putting regular articles in that about what we've been doing and what we've really done is we've worked with our local rainbow particularly their brownie and our guiding groups in Gammagate to reduce their single use plastic. Next slide please. So what we've been doing with the brownies and guides is due to Covid it's been virtual sessions but what we did we did a session where we actually invited all the brownies and guides in their separate events to collate all their single use plastic from their bathroom, look at the products. We discussed alternatives to those. We actually provided them with free samples of shampoo bars and soap bars and to try. It was brilliant because they were engaging with us about what they'd like to see the changes in the future and future products and then we did a follow-up session with them to see how they got on with the products as well and we're hoping to do that again next year to see how they've done in terms of producing their plastic just in their bathrooms but also through promoting that through social media we've had other community groups like the Scouts have said to us please can you run that session with us as well. So that's just given you a flavour of some of the community engagement that we're trying to get going and continuing in Gammagate and I happily share our community group Facebook page with you so that if any of you want to join that that'd be great and you can see what we're doing. So thank you that's just us really from Gammagate. Yes your product is really inspiring and it shows exactly what we mean by the wider community engagement so thank you. Wonderful just gives you such a lovely warm glow fantastic. Good thank you so much so if you're right Emma we'll move into the Q&A. Is that okay? Yeah absolutely fine. Lovely and so the first question that we have that has been upvoted with three likes so it's come to the top of the pile is around the community buildings and in terms of that the energy hierarchy that you know you showed on your slide there the question is how about air source heat pumps and Peter Allen we can actually give you the floor if you'd like to follow up with that supplementary question that you had there that gave us a bit of an understanding of your question. Is Peter there? Yes I'm in the process of but can you hear me? Yes we can. In the process of project managing a heat pump installation in a church building that's occupied by the equivalent LaVicca and I've had a heat pump for some time and I'm a retired engineer but the critical thing for community buildings is heat pumps are very good at constant level they're very efficient when the temperature gets constant level. If you want to have a building that you only use in the evenings and expect it to be nice and warm when you get in just after you've switched on the heat pump it won't work it takes hours to get the thermal mass of the building up to temperature and they're inefficient at that you're much better off using for depends on the occupancy ratio if you're just using occasional use building infrared heaters make it feel comfortable without heating the whole mass of the building up that's my experience. Okay thank you Peter so the question was from Mark and that was something came in thank you very much Peter for helping a bit on that does anybody on the panel want to answer about sort of air source heat pumps? Yes I'll just say something so I'm Siobhan so the I mean I absolutely take the points made around making sure that whatever the heating is it's going to work for that building absolutely dead on but aside from that the issue for us around heat pumps has been that the government funding scheme to help fund heat pumps is a renewable heat incentive and the requirements for that government funding scheme are if the money comes from a public authority then you're not eligible for the renewable heat incentive so we're not very keen to spend to to spend the community grant on heat pumps for that reason and because it's sort of not additional funding as it were however the in a scheme where the heat pump is a is a good option if you know if there are other aspects of the larger projects that that we could fund maybe anything that doesn't prevent you from getting the grant from the government and I would also say that if it's a really excellent project and a good reason is made then you know we would consider it so I think it's one to it's hard to be black and white on it it's one to discuss with us and I think it's very much linked as well perhaps and with one of the other questions which is around the community aspect of that I would suppose Siobhan as well and Emma which is you know you must also part from the technical side of that consider how wide a community engagement that you can actually achieve through that project is that right absolutely I mean you say that you're from a church so you know the obvious solution there would be you know obviously church services you know if you were going to sort of you know have a lot of people together you could share the benefits of what you're doing with the community in that way so it's all about sort of leading by example so that would be something that we would obviously encourage so here Emma so I think it's linked to another question by Lynn Tranta who's saying you know around community buildings as well if a centre is only used by one client group how can wider community engagement be achieved you know would it still meet the criteria um yes I mean I think what we have to realise is that everything is a scale to everything so if you've got a sort of smaller community building and smaller things but you know you're relatively speaking you might be requesting less so we have to sort of consider all of these things when we sort of you know allocate the money so you know but you know at the end of the day we're looking for sort of bold innovative sort of projects so if you can think of something you know even if it you know it might not necessarily reach a thousand people but if it's reaching some people that's good and obviously you know we would encourage that. Good thank you and then continuing the theme around the community buildings part of the the grants so what about providing EV charging points Mark Parrish asks um Siobhan I think you want me to answer that one. Yeah so EV charging points again it's a little bit of a similar issue in terms of the additionality there is this government funding towards electric vehicle charging points in particular there's two pots of funding a fairly one which gives a fairly small amount um which is the workplace charging scheme so if the place that you're wanting to put the electric vehicle charging point is a workplace then you'd be able to get that and we would be happy to receive an application again community engagement important but we'd be really keen to see that that um that that funding has been been sought it's quite easy to get that one um and then there's there's there's much more funding available from the government the um it's called the on street residential charging scheme and that is 75% of the of the costs of um of the electric vehicle charging point it's a bit more difficult to get that because you need to make a case that um that there is demand for the um electric vehicle charging point and you need to um get the the you need to get um a uh road traffic i can't remember the the phrase for it but you need to to designate the um the bay so again no one want to discuss really to work out whether that's possible um also we don't have a particular theme for electric vehicle charging points so you you're going to be it's going to be quite competitive if you're putting in a fund for that so if you can get some of the funding from elsewhere if you can show really good community engagement those are all things which would would really help so it might go into the the other the third sort of criteria yeah and then you've got to be sort of very very special yeah like you say competitive and show how it's um quite a special project good and then we do have a question from Kate Britton Kate are you there are you there Kate hi Pippa hello there do you want to you have a question there Kate about funding going towards capital purchase yeah so we have a village project where there was a piece of land coming up for sale um and it's a very special piece of land it's been left for 20 years to sort of rewild um and we've got a community kind of organisation project together to try and buy this piece of land for the community um forever and perhaps form our own charity but obviously this grant would go towards towards a sort of small part of the capital purchase price of that land and I wondered whether that was something the grant could go towards or whether we'd be better off seeing whether there's any particular equipment or planting needs or fencing or access that it could go towards because you need funding for all of those things so you're just saying where do you pitch this for the grant? Yeah exactly how do how do I pitch it best? Thanks Pippa. Evan do you want to have a bash up to you? I don't mind I mean I suppose it all depends on how much the land is because obviously land is you know can be quite expensive so um but yes capital costs absolutely fine if it's something that's helping you know your project um so if you want to some sort of stakes or something or protection guards for your trees um tools or anything that's absolutely fine but again you know we it's going to be very competitive this grant so you know if if your project was asking for a lot of money say the maximum amount £15,000 you have to bear in mind that you know again community engagement everything is you know there's a lot to consider so to get £15,000 you're going to have to sort of you know try really hard and you know it depends how much you could buy with £15,000 as well. And that what I imagine would be part of the evaluation criteria comes in with Kate's second question I see here Kate which is about how you measure um the carbon reduction that would be um connect is that right Kate was connected with that same project are you asking? Yes absolutely I would have no idea how we how we go about that so advice on that would be okay yeah well we've provided some guidance that comes with our um our actual um if you go on to our web page when you the apply page if you go on to the guidance notes um there's also little help buttons next to each question so basically you know like I say it can be an estimate but if you know the number of trees and what sizes of the trees you can use that and you can also go on to the woodland carbon code website so um if you upload all your information it should be able to give you some kind of figure now I've not seen it exactly in actions I'm not exactly sure you know how accurate but as long as you've sort of given us a little bit of idea of how many trees and the sizes that's that's still really good so is that okay? That's great thank you very much really helpful. Good and so maybe you can provide some of those links I think Siobhan you mentioned some of those around the eb charging points Emma if you've got sort of any links in the chat to where those um those can be found as well great and um Lynn Chander are you with us Lynn hi Lynn do you want to are you able to say your question which is about you know if if something you're you're saying it's going to cost so much and you're hoping to get some much funding um what happens if if that isn't there by the time that is that you know if the time that the project goes in are you there Lynn? Yep that's it spot on so can you put a grant in with the with the chance that you might be able to raise the rest of the money? Yes um do you want to answer that or do you want me to answer it? Yes I mean I think that there are um yeah it can be difficult isn't it when you're trying to get funds from several places and it's it and you're sort of juggling juggling that um it where funding is agreed that is going to be hugely helpful um in terms of of um of your application um yeah I think it it it all depends what else comes in but I think that that that that it's going to be quite difficult for us to give funding in the situation where it's not clear that um clear where the rest of it's going to come from and I can imagine with with any land thing it would also be about sort of ownership of the land you might have to sort of show that you really do own the land or able to and and I noticed Lynn's question was about community building so yeah on that one thank you Lynn does that answer your question? Yeah really clear good wonderful and we do have a final question here from Robert it's quite a personal one specific one but it may be relevant to everybody Robert are you there? Hi Robert are you there? Good I think you're on mute there Robert or finding it difficult to to take the mute off I think you've been given permission um but the mute's not on I'm going to read out your question so Robert says he's volunteered to complete the costing section of a bid for a community onsite website um I'd like to discuss potential options with South Cam's new media team to ensure my ideas are in line with theirs is this feasible and he reckons he wouldn't cost too much really but um is it possible to put is it possible hello Robert is it possible to include those kind of costs of resource people into a grant I suppose is the question? No that actually that wasn't the question oh sorry Robert the question sorry I'm on a phone outside it's a nice evening I couldn't work out how to unmute it yeah the question is really the opportunity to have a consultation with the new media team first to actually make sure that a there isn't something that they've got in in already that we could reuse because that would be you know why I spend any money if you don't have to and be to make sure if we do have a solution to actually discuss potential solutions with them with a view to maybe reducing something that other applicants or other communities could actually reuse the idea trying to get the best value for money and biggest bang for our buck out of what we're doing yep thank you very much panel I'm slightly confused by the question I don't know if any of the other panellists are clearer than me so the the new media team unclear as to as to what um what do you mean presumably there's a department or a team in South Cams that are actually responsible for electronic communications producing websites that sort of stuff all right I don't know what you call them so I just used a generic term so apologies for that I mean they were a very helpful bunch so I'm sure um we could put you in touch with them and they they they may work if they can help if they can help without you know taking them forever if they I'm sure they will that would be fantastic and again I don't want to take up a lot of that time but I'd quite like to have a quick chat with them just to to share my thoughts to just make sure that what I'm doing is in line with their thinking great so maybe you could um get in contact with Emma um Robert and he will help you by email and she'll be able to help you in terms of the contacts we've got a lovely media conference team brilliant thank you very much thank you well thank you everybody um for that set of questions there's a whole amount of information and it's just so lovely hearing examples as well from everybody of what they've been doing so far and what we've learned I think over the last two rounds of our zero carbon community grants which are by far the most popular of our of our grants really and they are really starting to cause you know this momentum at at the local level which is fantastic because we can't meet our district zero carbon targets that we've committed to without you um and and that's that's just it so we have to do all of this together thank you to this fantastic panel that we've had here so thank you Sally and I know that Mark's in the background as well but thank you Sally so much for such a clear presentation and I know that you'll be on hand to help everybody as well Cheryl you just wowed everybody it was just so lovely to be immersed in what it's like to have that kind of community engagement um give us all this lovely lovely glow because you're just doing it so well um and to Emma and Siobhan as always who are the leaders in this who are really taking our aspirations ambitions meeting them with yours out in the community and we're looking forward to hearing from you and receiving your applications thank you everybody thank you