Transform Issue 31 - November 2022 Edition

Planning for a sustainable future

Welcome to the latest issue of Transform which is focused on sustainability. In this edition we look at a range of schemes being run by local authorities from food sustainability programs through to initiatives aimed at helping ready local workers to embrace the hydrogen economy. We also look at an air quality initiative being supported by Camden Council, as well as at a community facility in Poland which is leading the way in sustainable design with a focus on healthy air for its users. We hope you enjoy this issue. Please send any comments, news, or views for inclusion to: Annabelle Atkin at annabelle.atkin@iese.org.uk

CONTENTS

Page

2 Column and introduction from Dr Andrew Larner, Chief Executive at iESE.

3 News: Battery technology, EV charging and air pollution.

4 Feature: The clean air initiative working in partnership.

5 Feature: East Ayrshire’s Dignified Food Programme.

6 Features: Angus Council’s Food Strategy & the Polish facility focused on clean air.

7 Feature: How Eastbourne is looking at decarbonising social housing.

8 Feature: How Mid & East Antrim is upskilling workers to embrace hydrogen.

EDITORIAL CONTACTS

TRANSFORM IS PRODUCED BY: iESE www.iese.org.uk

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CREDITS: Designed by SMK Design (Aldershot)

Editorial by Vicki Arnstein

Views expressed within are those of the iESE editorial team. iESE Transform is distributed to companies and individuals with an interest in reviewing, remodelling and reinventing public services.

© Copyright iESE 2022

It’s time to change the debate

With the cost-of-living crisis negatively impacting our local communities, it is my belief is that it’s time to change the debate from how we help people afford escalating food and fuel prices through strategies such as industry subsides and increases in state welfare to one around increasing sustainability.

Heating and eating are the two main pressures facing our communities and while some residents do need urgent direct help it is also necessary to take more of a long-term view alongside meeting these short-term needs. There is a connection between the cost-of-living crisis and the energy crisis, and my belief is that we should look at the shopping basket of the vulnerable to find ways to make it greener by harnessing the rapid developments we are seeing worldwide in energy production. Such a strategy will drive down costs in the long term and have the dual benefit of protecting the environment, helping local authorities meet net-zero targets.

There has been much debate recently about whether the Government should put more money into the fossil fuel industry in a bid to prevent costs being passed onto customers. There have also been calls for the green levy to be scrapped – an environmental charge which helps fund green energy policies, but which adds around £150 per year to household energy bills. Green energy should be far cheaper than fossil fuel energy if these benefits were being passed onto customers, but some people have drawn the conclusion that the cost of greening the economy is a negative thing and the money spent on increasing green energy should instead be put into fracking. But this is a perilously short-term view.

There is a virtuous circle between sustainability and affordable living, but we are currently failing to join the dots, resulting in unsustainable less affordable living. Transport is changing, power to the home is changing, the way in which we can generate energy locally is changing. Harnessing these developments and becoming greener is a future solution to more affordable living.

The drive to replace Britain’s old iron gas mains pipes to help make them ready to transport hydrogen will have seen an investment of £28bn by 2023. This is according to figures from the Energy Networks Association but I have heard estimates which are as much as five times higher and this is quite believable given the scale of the work required. While this is a laudable and necessary project, we could also invest in helping some of our most deprived residents come off grid entirely. By targeting the housing associations and taking everyone on a meter off grid you could create a programme that lifts those people out of fuel poverty. And at the same time, you create jobs and an industry which would be a positive input into the economy.

We must also recognise that food production costs are going to continue to be impacted for some time due to rising gas and electricity costs and find ways to help support our farmers. By helping decarbonise the industry through the use of green energy to produce fertiliser rather than fossil fuels and green energy to power machinery, we could help cut the costs which are crippling our farmers and see the benefits filter down to residents’ shopping baskets.

Of course, schemes such as these take time, planning and investment, but simply firefighting to help the vulnerable to afford the increases in their shopping basket today won’t be enough, we need to predict how this shopping basket will be affected in the months and years to come and find sustainable long-term solutions.

Dr Andrew Larner, Chief Executive

Battery technology may increase EV use

ADVANCES IN BATTERY TECHNOLOGY SHOULD MAKE SWITCHING FROM PETROL- AND DIESELPOWERED VEHICLES TO ELECTRIC (EV) INCREASINGLY APPEALING FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC, IMPACTING PLANS FOR LOCAL CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE.

CATL, the company behind the new Qilin battery, claim the technology will give pure electric vehicles a 620-mile range and allow fast-charging to 80 per cent in ten minutes. The new design, which will be available in mass production in 2023, has reduced the structural

components of the battery meaning it weighs less and takes up less space than currently available technology.

Dr Andrew Larner, CEO at iESE, said the Qilin had the potential to dramatically change the landscape for electric vehicles: “Battery technology is one of the main areas of advancement. Once vehicles don’t need as big a battery, they are likely to become a lot cheaper because the battery is the biggest cost component in the car. This means more residents in local authorities will be able to afford electric

Help at hand to roll out EV charging

LOCAL AUTHORITIES CAN ROLL OUT AN EV CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE IN THEIR AREA WITHOUT ACCESSING PUBLIC FUNDS THROUGH THE OPERATOR LIBERTY CHARGE.

The company, which has been operational for a year, has already installed EV charging infrastructure across West and North Northamptonshire and six London boroughs. Perran Moon, Chief Marketing Officer at Liberty Charge, who is also a Labour Councillor, said the proposition on offer was unique. The company is 50 per cent owned by Liberty Global, which also owns Virgin Media UK who are Liberty Charge’s delivery partner, giving it access to millions of cables throughout the UK.

“We require no public money to roll out EV infrastructure, we are entirely privately funded. Whilst we can help local authorities apply for and get Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) funding, we don’t need it. Our model is based on charge point optimisation and ensuring the right chargers are installed in the right locations. It is simply not in our interest to just roll out any infrastructure, we are thinking about what the local authority needs, now and in the future,” Moon said.

Liberty Charge works with local authorities to determine where charge points will be placed, using proprietary data created with Loughborough University which overlays millions of datapoints across a map of

the UK. As a resident proposition, the company installs all speeds of charge point from lamp posts to rapids and places itself in mid-range for pricing. Local authorities can also be reassured the network will be maintained and upgraded, as Liberty Charge’s model relies on convenient and working infrastructure.

Liberty Charge has been involved with the creation of the EV Infrastructure Hub – a free resource local authorities can use to understand the process from defining their EV strategy through to maintenance. “I would encourage local authorities to go to the EV Infrastructure Hub, identify where they are in their journey and use the tool to guide them through the process. If they are knowledgeable, it oils the wheels of the whole industry. We know as an industry we are falling behind where we need to be on on-street EV infrastructure by 2030, when the Government will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles. A big part of it is funding but we don’t need that so there is no reason why any local authority working with Liberty Charge can’t accelerate their EV infrastructure at scale and at pace, whenever they are ready,” Moon added.

• Visit the EV Infrastructure Hub: https://evinfrastructurehub.org/

• Find out more about Liberty Charge: www.libertycharge.com

Air pollution linked to lung cancer in non-smokers

SCIENTISTS HAVE FOUND EXPOSURE TO PARTICULATE MATTER PM2.5 – AIR PARTICLES WHICH ARE NOT GAS, AND WHICH ARE LESS THAN 2.5 MICROMETRES IN DIAMETER – PROMOTES THE GROWTH OF CELLS IN THE LUNGS WHICH CARRY CANCER-CAUSING MUTATIONS.

Lead investigator for the Cancer Research UK-funded study at the Francis Crick Institute and UCL, Cancer Research UK Chief Clinician Professor Charles Swanton, said the study had fundamentally changed how lung cancer was viewed in non-smokers. “Cells with cancer-causing mutations accumulate naturally as we age but they are normally inactive. We’ve demonstrated that air pollution wakes these cells up in the lungs, encouraging them to grow and potentially form tumours,” he said.

While air pollution has been linked to various health problems, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma, scientists have now been able to explain how PM2.5 causes cancer in people who have never smoked.

The study looked at data from more than 40,000

people from UK and Asian countries and examined rates of a type of lung cancer known as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutant lung cancer. Mutations in the EGFR gene are commonly found in lung cancer cases of non-smokers. It was found that there were higher rates of EGFR mutant lung cancer, and other types of cancers, in people living in areas with higher levels of PM2.5 air pollution. Dr William Hill, co-first author of the study, said this evidence highlighted the need to “urgently reduce people’s overall exposure to air pollution”

Local authorities have legal duties under the Local Air Quality Management statutory guidance to monitor and improve local air quality. Revised policy guidance was produced in August 2022 in response to a consultation undertaken by the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Of the 168 responses received, 76 were from local government. One of the questions asked what action local authorities could take to help reduce PM2.5 emissions. Almost half of the respondents indicated a preference for more action to be taken on domestic

vehicles and this should then cascade into areas such as community transport too,” he said.

While many councils are stepping up their charging infrastructure, some have expressed concerns around whether the National Grid can cope with an increase in electric vehicles. Graeme Cooper, Head of Future Markets at the National Grid, however, has been quoted as saying that the grid can support the demand: “There is definitely enough energy and the grid can cope easily,” he said.

Europe’s most powerful charging hub opens in Oxford

IN JULY THIS YEAR EUROPE’S MOST POWERFUL ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING HUB OPENED IN OXFORD OFFERING RAPID CHARGING USING RENEWABLE ENERGY FOR UP TO 42 VEHICLES INITIALLY WITH THE CAPACITY TO SUPPORT CHARGING OF UP TO 400 VEHICLES AS DEMAND INCREASES.

The hub, which is a partnership between Oxford City Council, Pivot Power, Fastned, Telsa Superchargers and Wenea, is directly connected to the National Grid’s high voltage transmission network, providing the power needed to charge large numbers of EVs quickly without putting strain on the local electricity network. The network also has capacity to expand to key locations throughout Oxford to meet mass EV charging needs, from buses and taxis to commercial fleets.

Councillor Imogen Thomas, Cabinet Member for Zero Carbon Oxford and Climate Justice at Oxford City Council, said: “To achieve a Zero Carbon Oxford by 2040 we need to encourage uptake in electric vehicles, and drivers want to know that they can charge their vehicles quickly and efficiently. The completion of the Energy Superhub Oxford is an exciting step for our city and the future of EV [electric vehicle] charging.”

Pivot Power, part of EDF Renewables, plans to deploy up to 40 Energy Superhubs across the UK. A further two projects are underway in Coventry and Sandwell.

• Find out more about future projects at: www.pivot-power.co.uk

burning and almost as many identified road transport related actions such as promoting active travel and improving public transport. Other areas highlighted included: improved public communications on PM2.5, increased action and funding from central government and local PM2.5 targets along with the powers needed for local authorities to achieve compliance.

In its response, DEFRA said the Government would be expanding the PM2.5 monitoring network over the next two years to better assess exposure reduction and potential elevated concentrations.

• Read more about Local Air Quality Management statutory duties here: Local Air Quality Management Support Website | DEFRA - https://laqm.defra.gov.uk/

• Find out how the Camden Clean Air Initiative is improving air quality in the London Borough of Camden on page 4

How partnership working is tackling air pollution

Strong partnership working between a not-for-profit action group and Camden Council is helping deliver a multitude of green benefits, including the introduction of the world’s densest air pollution monitoring network which is helping raise air quality awareness among local businesses and residents.

The not-for-profit action group The Camden Clean Air Initiative (CCAI) was launched during the first COVID-19 lockdown in response to a reduction of NO2 emissions due to fewer cars being on the road. Despite its infancy, the action group has rapidly activated multiple initiatives aimed at both reducing and raising awareness of toxins in the air which have been embraced by local businesses and residents. The CCAI has also forged a strong working relationship with The London Borough of Camden Council. This relationship is helping deliver many projects, including connecting the council with AirScape, a company which gathers air quality data through its AirNode sensors, leading to the installation of the world’s densest air pollution monitoring network in Camden. The project has seen 228 AirNode sensors installed around Camden. AirScape funds the build, maintenance, and installation costs which it aims to offset by sponsorship of the AirNodes, while the council provides the location and power. The CCAI has been involved at every stage, from speaking with residents about the project and liaising with the council around the placement of sensors, and is now planning workshops for schools and businesses to raise awareness of the scheme and explain how the data generated by the sensor network can be freely accessed and used.

The AirNodes provide real-time data on PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and O3 as well as temperature and humidity. Often the sensors are mounted on street lighting columns but can also be placed on buildings and other street furniture, subject to local planning rules. Through logging onto AirScape.ai residents, local organisations, schools and businesses can see hyper-local up-to-date data. This can be used for many purposes including: planning to walk, run, or cycle the healthiest route, see where the air is cleanest to choose where to live, work or send children to school and help understand where

pollution is coming from and how it can be reduced. Georgina McGivern, Programme Manager at the CCAI, explained how it was able to connect the other stakeholders, AirScape and Camden Council, due to its existing relationship with the local authority: “Camden Council has been really supportive of our work and a fantastic partner. The AirScape initiative has been a great project and what is powerful is that it provides data. This complements everything we do because it adds fact to what we are talking about. It gives residents and local businesses a sense of empowerment to have that data at their fingertips too.”

The new air monitoring network is not used by the council for its own statutory air quality monitoring, for which it has its own sensors, but it has welcomed the initiative’s ability to engage and educate the public on air pollution in the borough. Councillor Adam Harrison, Cabinet member for a Sustainable Camden, said: “Reducing air pollution is absolutely vital to improving the health and well-being of everyone in Camden. The data from this network will help us engage with our community, giving us the power to make smarter, informed decisions to tackle air pollution. Making this data freely accessible to all members of our community further demonstrates the council’s longstanding commitment to the open sharing of data in the public interest.”

Antonio Mugica, Executive Chairman at AirScape, said there are many ways a local authority could use the data in addition to citizen engagement: “With our detailed data a council can work out the hyper-local sources of pollution and measure against legal limits and targets, decide where or when to prioritise local action and planning and inform the public about breaches in safe levels of air pollution,” he explained.

The recent findings by the Francis Crick Institute on how air pollution can cause cancer (see page 3) is likely

to push the issue of local air pollution further up the agenda with local authorities and residents becoming more aware of the dangers of air pollution. “Air pollution is killing people and people in cities are especially vulnerable. It is also important to act because a lot of the measures you can put in place to bring air pollution levels down are important in protecting the environment too, at a time when climate change is on everybody’s minds. It is all about creating clean air and a safer community for now and the future,” McGivern added.

AirScape is already speaking with other London boroughs about adopting a network and, while the CCAI’s current priority is seeing a reduction in air pollution in Camden, McGivern says the organisation is keen to become a pan-London organisation in the future. “We have started with our local community, but know that air pollution does not obey boundaries so aim to introduce our projects to other Boroughs in the future,” she said.

When asked for any tips on how other local authorities could implement a similar scheme, Mugica and McGivern have a similar answer. Mugica feels the initiative has been particularly successful due to the collaboration between AirScape, the CCAI, Camden Council and the local community. McGivern agrees: “If a local authority was looking to have a similar project, what has worked well is the partnership between a not-for-profit, the local council and a business. Having that kind of partnership has been really effective. I don’t think a project like this would succeed without the support from each of those parties,” she explained.

• To find out more about AirScape visit: https://www.airlabs.com

• To find out more about the Camden Clean Air Initiative visit: The Camden Clean Air Initiativehttps://camdencleanair.org/

An AirNode in position and example of how Camden residents can check air pollution levels in the borough online.

The CCAI's Georgina McGivern (centre) and colleagues running a stand at a local school.

The food scheme kept under wraps

East Ayrshire’s Dignified Food Programme has far-reaching benefits to its communities, tackling hunger in the area while simultaneously reducing food waste. Despite its enormously valuable work, it’s an initiative the council hopes residents do not know exists.

East Ayrshire is a local authority with a long history of increasing the availability of quality food to its residents. In 2005 the council started developing closer relationships with local suppliers to increase local produce in its school meals. Fast forward to 2017 and work on its Dignified Food Programme began in response to Brexit. This was further strengthened in the pandemic and is still growing as increasing numbers of residents face food and now fuel poverty.

The programme’s delivery requires close working between Mark Hunter, Strategic Lead Food and Facilities Support, and Kevin Wells, Strategic Lead for Communities, who are jointly overseen by Andrew Kennedy, Head of Facilities and Property Management at East Ayrshire Council.

“The Dignified Food Programme was created out of a network of collaboration and close working between council departments. The overview was that we needed to find innovative ways to address high levels of deprivation, poor health, unemployment, and food bank dependency in our authority. We wanted to look at how we could take a more dignified approach and that included within the community but also within our schools,” Hunter explained.

The initiative started by providing free holiday activities for children where they would also be fed. “It is a stigma-free approach. A child would never know the purpose was to feed them, they are coming for an activity, and we feed them as part

of the process. It could be child who is from a family who is destitute, and we know because they come every day and we see them take excess food home, but they are not distinguished,” said Wells.

The programme has grown, with the teams led by Hunter and Wells looking for ever more ways to collaborate, cut down on food waste and get food to those who need it in a non-stigmatised way. One of the approaches it took was looking at what was already operating in the community to see how it could support these schemes without taking them over. One example of this was the various community larders that already existed. “The food bank was predominately third sector voluntary organisations and is now a range of community groups interlaced with the work of the council. What we didn’t want to do was go in and say we are going to create this – it was about supporting the groups that were already there and finding out what worked. We could do the logistics and the volume, but it was still the organisations that were leading on it and had control of what was being delivered to each of the individual communities,” Kennedy said.

The council established a contract with food redistributor FareShare to help supply the larders, of which there are now plans for 17 in the area, up from a handful in 2017. The council gets them set up and ready to apply for funding, so they are less reliant on the authority. Guidance has been produced around

food safety and coaching provided on the questions that can be asked by volunteers to gently guide users towards additional support, such as free school meals. The larders have a current but rapidly growing membership of 1,200 people who use the larders to access more affordable food and household items but also as a valuable community hub. “They come for a cup of tea and may use the larder or may not use the larder. They pay what they can and go home with some food that they can hopefully do something with,” added Wells.

Another strand of the Dignified Food Programme has been centred around reducing food waste while providing food to those who need it. “We now take our surplus food from the school counters and leave that in a dignified place at the end of the day for anyone who wants to take it home. It is labelled, packaged, and kept refrigerated if necessary and left at 3 o’ clock for young people to take. We don’t record it, but we know it is empty,” Hunter said. Another element has been educational work with the community and schools such as around the difference between best before and use-by dates. This, in turn, is impacting household waste. “I have responsibility for waste and waste management and that educational programme about how we make better use of the food we do have is having an impact on what I am seeing come through the bins,” noted Wells. The programme is also helping local businesses reduce carbon emissions, with more suppliers delivering locally.

When looking at this as a policy area, Kennedy advises starting slowly and aiming to get a wide buyin from various stakeholders. “If you are going to start, start off slowly, look at what you have on your doorstep and have those engagement discussions with suppliers and communities to see what they need. It is also about having the buy-in from your council and Chief Executive and having an understanding that there may be an increase in costs but that it is an investment. The challenge is how are you going to do it and that will be different in every community, you really just need to get in amongst it,” he said.

Key though, is delivery of such a programme in a dignified way. “We are not putting that big pointing finger and saying you are in fuel poverty or in crisis, it is just ‘come in and be part of our family’. Behind the scenes, wrapped around that, it is about community, it is about food, and it is about support,” Wells added. Kennedy agreed: “I would hope that nobody in East Ayrshire knows we have a Dignified Food Programme. We want people to recognise us for being caring, kind and connected and food plays a really strong part in that but, as soon as you label things you won’t succeed,” he concluded.

Planting roots for local food strategy

Angus Council is another Scottish local authority tackling food poverty alongside sustainability. It has taken its statutory obligation to prepare a food growing strategy and expanded this to include a range of initiatives which tie into its vision of Angus being a ‘great place to live, work and visit’.

Under the Community Empowerment 2015 (Scotland) Act, Scottish local authorities are obliged to prepare a food growing strategy which aims to ensure opportunities are developed for food growing, including identification of allotment land and describing how it can take reasonable steps to increase this provision.

Shelley Hague, Strategic Policy and Planning Manager at Angus Council, said the council led on the strategy but it was very much a partnership piece of work. “I was conscious when we were writing the food growing strategy that a lot of the guidance is around the pure food growing elements such as the availability of allotments. From the very early stages we got the gist that people wanted it to be much more, so we started to include additional elements and it is a lot wider than just freeing up allotment space,” she explained.

The plan was co-produced with the local community, including community groups, private organisations and

third-sector organisations. “We had a statutory responsibility to produce the plan, but we wanted to make sure it was deliverable in terms of who can deliver bits of it, and we made sure our resources were being put where they could make the greatest impact,” explained Hague. The result is like “an octopus” with different arms of the strategy focusing on different things but which all tie into the people of Angus having “good food, sustainable food, and a good offer”

The initiatives sparked from the plan have included looking at getting more local produce into school meals, alongside a service design consultation with young people. It has included looking at the various food-based projects which emerged during Covid and how these can be supported to continue. Work with NHS Tayside is helping deliver nutrition programmes to show residents how to bulk cook and has distributed slow cookers. Alongside another third-sector voluntary group, Voluntary Action Angus, it has been working on

access to food such as through school holiday provision.

There is also a focus on the commercial side and promoting Angus as a food destination. “Appetite for Angus is a collaborative of local food producers, charities, private sector organisations, people who have a vested interest in showcasing what Angus has to offer and they have been having events and doing social media. People are becoming a lot more aware of what is on offer in Angus and one of the bigger aims is to make Angus a destination for people to visit.”

Hague is looking forward to seeing the Food Growing Strategy go from strength-to-strength as it further integrates with the wider community plan and new sport framework. A key objective is continuing the community engagement: “You must engage with your local communities and local suppliers. It has got to be done in partnership with the community so they feel part of the journey,” Hague concluded.

Sustainable Polish facility wows iESE visitors

The Mareckie Centrum Edukacyjno-Rekreacyjne (MCER) in Marki near Warsaw was funded by Mareckie Inwestycje Miejskie, a company founded and owned by the Municipality of the City of Marki. As well as housing a primary school for 1,200 pupils, the MCER also contains a swimming pool, concert hall, sports hall, sports fields and courts.

The building has been designed as zero-energy meaning it produces and uses its own energy through renewable energy sources such as heat pumps, photovoltaic panels, advanced heat recovery systems and through equipment which produces electricity from gas. It has also been equipped with water saving devices, including rainwater storage, which is then reused to water green areas. The building also features a swamp roof system.

The MCER has also been designed to ensure indoor air quality is high. Large recuperators filter air inside the building to purify it from pollution and also recover heat from the polluted air to heat incoming fresh air. Each teaching room also features temperature control and CO2 concentration sensors.

Dr Andrew Larner, Chief Executive at iESE who took part in the MCER visit, said he was very impressed with

the whole project: “What fascinated me was they started by asking what environment children learn best in and then designed out from there. Healthy air, good external light, good quality facilities and good design go together. The breadth of facilities is amazing, and they have taken the level of air cleanliness to another level. The next step is installing the ironizing technology in the recuperator which removes smell and neutralises odour, but also neutralises bacteria and viruses as well,” he explained.

Dr Larner said the issue of air quality was starting to receive attention in Europe, including through the establishment of a not-for-profit organisation in Belgium called the Indoor Air Quality Society. “There is now a lot of practical but scientific evidencebased work going on across the whole of Europe to systematically improve classroom air quality standards. We ought to be looking at what has been achieved at the MCER and bringing it to our schools. While retrofitting can be expensive, we should at least be incorporating these strategies into new school design,” he added. • Read more about air quality on page 3

Representatives from iESE recently toured a new state school and community facility in Poland designed to be sustainable and provide healthy indoor air for users.

Eastbourne and Lewes scope housing decarbonisation

Eastbourne and Lewes Councils have engaged a strategic partner, Clear Futures, to look at decarbonisation of its social housing stock. Other local authorities can use the partnership for transformative challenges in the built environment too - particularly those with an environmental and sustainability element.

Clear Futures is a long-term partnering arrangement which was set up by Eastbourne and Lewes Councils in 2017 which is focused on delivering transformative projects at speed. With environmental and sustainability considerations at its core, the 30-year compliant delivery vehicle which has a £50bn threshold brings together expertise from strategic partners AECOM, an infrastructure consulting firm, and Robertson, a construction, infrastructure and support service business, to develop long-term solutions to a range of challenges. Clear Futures can assist in a wide range of projects in the built environment, including energy and decarbonisation, strategic estate management, regeneration, facilities management and retrofit and refurbishment.

When Eastbourne and Lewes established the Clear Futures partnership in 2017, it named all other councils and central and local government departments in its procurement, making the partnership accessible to all UK public sector bodies. Another local authority it has worked widely with is Bolton Council with which Clear Futures has a longterm strategic estate and facilities management role.

“We have done work with Eastbourne and Lewes, but we also have another seven or eight live partnerships where we are doing anything from upfront strategic support through to project development, project delivery and delivery of

services focused on key aspects of the built environment. Our work has included levelling up projects, estate decarbonisation projects aligned to the carbon net zero commitments public bodies have made, town centre regeneration projects, some strategic estate and facilities management projects and we are now looking at some specific investment-led opportunities,” explained Richard Airey, Director at Clear Futures and Operations Director at Robertson Capital Projects.

Eastbourne and Lewes have used Clear Futures for various projects, including planning and delivery of a new sustainably built restaurant near Eastbourne Pier to replace a café which had fallen into disrepair. It has now engaged the strategic partner to conduct research, alongside Brighton University, into decarbonising its social housing stock. The research has encompassed an additional six local authorities in the Sussex area to scope out bulk purchasing options.

Helena Rivers, Director at Clear Futures and Director at AECOM, said decarbonisation was a key area Clear Futures could help with at a time when local authorities are stretched in their everyday obligations with now the additional pressure of meeting net-zero commitments. “It is very tempting for people to put this firmly in the too difficult category when there are so many conflicting priorities. This is a vehicle that can support them in the long-term because there are

no quick answers to achieving net zero. What Clear Futures will do in a very robust structure is set the strategy and provide the delivery with competition provided to ensure they are getting value for money. We can seek grant funding and private sector funding where there are investable projects, particularly around green energy generation and can manage that whole process with their engagement as much or as little as they would like.”

For Eastbourne and Lewes, the decarbonisation research has looked at 40,000 homes and modelled the costs of potential interventions over a ten-year period to optimise programme delivery. For example, it has looked at solar PV installation and ground source heat pumps, taking into consideration the impact on residents who may welcome and need energy cost savings immediately but then may be faced with rising costs in the future. It has also calculated the potential savings if the council purchased materials in bulk and stored them until needed. “We are trying to look at different procurement solutions and realising that continuing to use the same answer isn’t solving this fundamental challenge everyone is facing,” Rivers added.

Ian Fitzpatrick, Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Planning and Regeneration at Eastbourne and Lewes Councils, said a major benefit of Clear Futures is that it creates a long-term relationship: “We wanted to change the way we interacted because we know that if everybody is motivated by making it work and happen for the longer term you get better results. It is in the interest of Clear Futures to get it right and not to behave in a short-termist fashion to try to get the maximum value out of the one contract.”

Committing to long-term partnerships also gives more certainty to the supply chain, encouraging investment in elements such as training, skills and research and development. “This approach incentivises investment in local skills development and gives certainty to local business to invest in growth. Taking a longer-term view is the most optimal way of delivery, if it is stop-start your local area won’t get the benefit. The seven councils in Sussex are spending £100m a year on our housing stock already and over a ten-year period we are going to spend £1bn by 2030. Clear Futures will make sure we can get the maximum benefits without sleepwalking into it – they will analyse and look at opportunities with us.”

Rivers agrees that having a ten-year horizon makes a “phenomenal difference” “Clear Futures will be operating well beyond ten-years which is unusual for a procurement vehicle. It gives us the opportunity to build the skills and education locally, create the local opportunity and concurrently achieve these longterm targets,” she explained.

• To find out more about Clear Futures visit: www.clearfutures.co.uk

• Eastbourne and Lewes featured in the Big Picture Sustainability segment at the iESE Conference 2022, watch this segment here: www.iese.org.uk/conference-2022

The NI council putting its energy into hydrogen

Hydrogen has been identified as a priority growth area for Mid and East Antrim where the borough council is leading on a pilot project aimed at upskilling individuals and educators to enable them to embrace the emerging sector.

id and East Antrim in Northern Ireland is in a unique position to embrace hydrogen for various reasons. This includes the new gas network infrastructure, which is more hydrogen-ready than the rest of the UK, the abundant wind resource and the gas and electric interconnectors between Northern Ireland (NI) and Great Britain. In addition, the area is home to world-leading companies at the forefront of hydrogen technology, and two power stations looking at transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables.

Karen Hastings, Investment & Place Manager at Mid & East Antrim Borough Council said hydrogen would be the main sectoral focus for her team over the next few years: “We have lost a lot of manufacturing jobs in the area so we looked at how we can target key sectors and grow our economy and how we can look at upskilling and reskilling,” she explained.

As part of this, the council has been the lead partner in an initiative called the Hydrogen Training Academy, which aims to upskill the workforce through delivery of courses which train delegates to work with hydrogen fuel, and ‘Train the Trainer’ through a Level 5 course aimed at upskilling academics and educators. The project has two bespoke training labs – the H2 Gas Safe Lab aimed at the plumbing and heating industry and the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Skills Lab, giving hands-on education to a range of sectors, including transport, manufacturing, engineering and construction.

The project has received funding from the UK Government through the UK Community Renewal Fund, the Department for Infrastructure in Northern Ireland, the Labour Market Partnership and private sponsorship from EPUK, owners of the two Power Stations in NI. The council has also been supported by several delivery partners and a consortium of key stakeholders and sponsors.

The Hydrogen Training Academy started in December 2021 and is currently planned to run until March 2023 as a pilot project. The Level 5 Train the Trainer course has been oversubscribed by 35 per cent to date and is anticipated to be oversubscribed by more than 100 per cent by completion. A range of Level 3 units have been developed and tested with a closed group of trainees, but industry demand is expected to exceed the places available during the overall pilot (60 places

across two Level 3 courses). Hastings and her team have managed the pilot by coordinating the partners and workstreams, ensuring milestone deliveries are met and are now looking to establish a sustainable model for the future.

“Hydrogen is very expensive, and storage costs in particular have been higher than anticipated. There are a lot of additional costs that need to be covered but we have managed to develop the academy so far without financial commitment from council except for our time commitment to the project. We have established really good partnerships with academia and industry and gained a lot of traction,” Hastings added.

The council also facilitates networks such as a Manufacturing Task Force where 50 local member companies and stakeholders have identified hydrogen and cleantech as key sectors for sustainable economic growth. It also recently established the Cleantech Collaborative Growth Network to link small and medium-sized businesses with larger organisations, including local bus manufacturer Wrightbus (see box), to enable them to learn from and work with each other on market solutions.

“There are good discussions in the network about how they can collaborate on projects and apply for funding,” Hastings added, “They are all learning from each other, which is the beauty of the collaborative approach.”

Hastings said the council would be happy to share its learning or provide virtual tours of the lab to interested parties. The council believes clean energy is something all local authorities could look at, both to help meet its own net zero targets and support industry: “You only have to watch the news to see that we are in a climate emergency. Not only do we all have a responsibility to act, but we also have a chance to embrace the opportunities that this emerging sector presents,” she concluded.

• To find out more about Mid and East Antrim Borough Council’s Hydrogen Training Academy contact Karen Hastings: Karen.Hastings@midandeastantrim.gov.uk

• Mid and East Antrim featured in the The Green Agenda segment at the iESE Conference 2022, watch this segment here: www.iese.org.uk/conference-2022

Wrightbus: Driving production of hydrogen buses

Bus manufacturer Wrightbus is a company with a long industrial history in Ballymena in the borough of Mid and East Antrim. The company, which now employs almost 1,000 staff, was bought out of administration in 2019 by JCB Chairman Jo Bamford, and has since expanded its range of clean energy-powered vehicles, including launching the world’s first hydrogenpowered double deck bus.

Wrightbus is a key partner in Mid & East Antrim Borough Council’s Manufacturing Task Force and collaborative groups. Karen Hastings, Investment & Place Manager at Mid & East Antrim Borough Council, said: “As a local success story demonstrating how hydrogen technology can deliver exponential growth, Wrighbus openly shares its cleantech knowledge, expertise and experience to help others embrace the benefits aligned to this fast-emerging sector.”

At a recent Mid & East Antrim Borough Council event, Buta Atwal, outgoing Wrightbus Chief Executive, said: “I believe Mid and East Antrim is fast becoming the hydrogen hub in Northern Ireland. Through the investment being undertaken by the council, along with our pioneering work and technology, this joint green growth approach is putting the area firmly on the map.

“With the success of Wrightbus in developing zero emission products, especially in the field of hydrogen, we needed support with the training and development of the next generation of people. There aren’t any bus companies which have delivered more hydrogen buses than us and there aren’t many councils developing an ecosystem like this to support companies like ours.”