The Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) applies to investment in shares in a ‘Society for the Benefit of the Community’, which is what we are. According to Money Observer “The schemes offer investors significant benefits: investors who invest for a minimum period of three years benefit from 30 per cent tax relief as well as exemption from capital gains tax (CGT) and inheritance tax (IHT)” Read more here.

Halton Lune Hydro has to apply formally to be registered for EIS and we are currently in the process of doing this.

If community energy schemes are part of the government’s energy masterplan, why are there so many planning obstacles? Alison Cahn shares her frustrations with the current system.
Originally published in the Guardian on 14th February 2013

Politicians of all hues love talking about community, urging people to get involved in planning, building and providing services for people in their area. But do they really know the cost to those involved? Do they realise the time, energy and expertise needed to jump through the many hoops involved to get a community scheme off the ground? Judging by my experience, I can only assume not.

I’ve just moved into one of the North’s newest experiments in communal living; a pioneering eco-cohousing project just outside Lancaster, created and run by the people who live there. So I know how difficult it is to bring community schemes to fruition, and how government agencies, far from helping community projects thrive, can frustrate them.

It took more than eight years to get from a good idea to the point we’re at now, where the 41 eco-homes are (almost) completed. Why? Well, doing anything outside the norm is difficult. Banks, planners, lawyers, utility companies, all those whose co-operation you need to make something happen, are often uncomprehending or even suspicious. The (mostly) volunteers running community projects are doing this in their spare time, often juggling jobs and children, and they are usually first-timers, learning the ropes as they try to navigate bureaucratic systems that are not designed with them in mind.

The weir for the Halton Lune Hydro project.

After the blood, sweat and tears put into the cohousing scheme, our community is seeing it happen again with a community energyproject: Halton Lune Hydro, an attempt to install a small hydro scheme on a weir. Our cohousing community is involved because the cable carrying the electricity will cross our land, and the energy generated will feed into our micro grid. It’s a brilliant scheme – not only will it generate enough electricity to power up to 300 homes, but also enough income to fund numerous community projects, and provide environmental improvements to an important salmon river (using £300,000 of European grant funding).

With that grant and projected annual earnings of £156,000 from electricity sales and feed-in tariffs (Fits), the project cost of £922,000 should be paid off within eight years, leaving the annual income available to benefit the community. A proposed second turbine, separately financed, would increase that income to £230,000 a year. What a boon in an era of spending cuts.

But getting the permits needed from the Environment Agency (EA) has proved a nightmare. It’s not that Halton Lune Hydro expects to be given an easy time: they may be volunteers, but they have impressive credentials, including a chartered engineer, John Blowes, as project manager. What drives them crazy are the ever-changing goalposts and different parts of the EA not talking to one another. Repeatedly, when John and his colleagues meet EA officials, they think they have reached an agreement, only to discover more information is wanted, or something else must be done. They have even been asked – twice – to withdraw their application and resubmit it to give the EA more time to consider it.

Just before Christmas, when the second request to withdraw came in after three years of work on the project, John and the others running Halton Lune Hydro lost patience and made a formal complaint to the EA. The delays don’t just mean more work, but also, ironically, jeopardise the enviromental improvements linked to the scheme, as the European grant imposes deadlines to spend the money. John likens developing a community energy scheme to playing a game of 3D chess.

The Environment Agency team visits the Lancaster Cohousing project.

Things progressed swiftly however when Steve Moore, the EA’s director in the north-west, got involved. After visiting the hydro and cohousing site (he was well impressed) he reassured John there wasn’t an anti-hydro element in his agency and the figures bear that out: of the 217 applications for permits in England and Wales since 2009, only nine have been rejected – and none of these were in the north-west.

However, most of these schemes will have been commercial, not community, projects. Barely a dozen community energy share offers have been launched in the past year – and these include wind and solar as well as hydro.

Moore told me the EA struggles to commit the time necessary to help ease community applicants through its complex processes. During his visit he said “official bodies like ourselves need to keep thinking about how we can continually simplify our systems to enable more of this to happen”.

“Community energy” – small-scale renewable energy schemes developed and (sometimes) financed at a local level to supply local need – is politically in vogue. Ed Davey, the energy and climate change minister, has called for a “community energy revolution”. So, surely the government’s energy bill, currently making its way through parliament, will kickstart this revolution?

Not as it currently stands. My partner, Kevin Frea, who has developed two community solar projects and is setting up a community energy network, tells me that the proposals introduce more complexity and so favour the big six energy generators over smaller community schemes.

Alison Cahn relaxes at Lancaster Cohousing – eight years after the project’s beginnings.

Anyway, legislation is only part of the answer. What is really needed is a radical rethink in the way the state interacts with those who want to get community schemes going. Because at present these projects are unbelievably difficult to pull off, demanding vast persistence and patience from the volunteers involved.

So what could the government do that would make a difference? One thing would be to create a new breed of official whose role is to help groups through the process; people who understand that volunteers in community schemes, unlike commercial operators, have to take time off from their real jobs to come to a daytime meeting; people with status, who can work between agencies and who can get answers to questions. Then maybe the revolution has a chance.

Alison Cahn is a journalist, film-maker and communications specialist living in Lancaster Cohousing

A renewable energy project near Lancaster has been awarded a government grant of £432,900.

The Halton Carbon Positive project involves more environmentally-friendly housing and a new hydro-electric system using water from the River Lune.

The schemes are part of larger ambitions by the village to reduce its carbon footprint.

“We want to show what can be achieved by a community working together,” said project spokesman Brian Jefferson.

“We want a thriving and sustainable local community, with local jobs that don’t harm the environment.”

The money has come from the Rural Carbon Challenge Fund, a scheme managed by Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

It will pay for adaptations to ensure the Halton Lune Hydro’s turbine does not harm the salmon, sea trout and eels in the River Lune, and help fund the installation of a heating system for 40 houses by Lancaster Cohousing.

The hydro scheme is expected to save 530 tonnes of carbon a year and produce enough electricity for an estimated 264 homes

It will allow workspace in a disused mill building, which is being renovated.

Huw Johnson, a director of Lancaster Cohousing, said: “The philosophy of cohousing is based on using the resources available within the community to build a more sustainable, supportive and better way of living.

“We are delighted to be working with the village, and the hydro project, to help us achieve our aim of having zero carbon homes by sourcing energy from local, renewable sources.”

THE River Lune could provide Halton with more than a third of its electricity needs under a new scheme.

Lancaster Cohousing, in partnership with Local and Effective Sustainable Solutions (LESS) and Halton Community Association (HCA), has won a 500,000 grant to develop a community owned hydro-electric scheme at Halton Gorge.

The money will also be spent on converting the former Luneside Engineering factory at Halton Mills into eco-housing, and installing new solar panels. The Halton project is one of just 22 across the country to be granted funds from the Government’s Low Carbon Community Challenge.

Jon Sear, Lancaster Cohousing project manager said: “It’s fantastic the Government has recognised that we are planning something really special.

“But our project won’t just be a national example of low carbon living.

It will deal with the dereliction of the former Luneside Engineering factory so that the whole of Halton Gorge is a more pleasant place to visit.”

Lancaster Cohousing plans to build around 30 zero-carbon homes within some of the existing factory walls, to be ready by early 2012. Already, 20 have been reserved.

A Victorian mill, which forms part of the site, will be refurbished to provide office space, workshop areas and studios for local businesses. A detailed planning application will be submitted in March.

Work is expected to start in the summer with a proposed opening date of next year.

HCA will install the hydro turbine, with power being sold locally and profits going towards developing new environmental projects in the village.

Maureen Richardson, community association fundraiser, said the turbine could supply electricity to 300 houses, and when the river is flowing faster.