Thanks to a grant of just under £50,000 we have been able to upgrade lighting to bright LED both inside and outside of the Old School buildings and have introduced automatic lighting in our internal communal spaces. This benefits other site users such as East Kent College: Aylesham, the Aylesham KCC Library and the Bechange Community Hub. This work makes us more environmentally sustainable and helps to reduce the amount of energy we all use to light the buildings and site and will mean that, in the future, we can direct resources more directly into furthering our Charitable Aims of supporting the local community and improving local access to employment and training opportunities.
We would like to thank One Call Electrical Services. We were delighted that we were able to offer this contract to a trusted local business. All the work is being delivered during January and February 2025 by One Call who are doing an excellent job, completing the work despite the tricky task of juggling all the comings and goings of our various visitors and tenants.
A successful application in 2023 to the VCSE Energy Efficiency Scheme (overseen by the Department of Digital Media and Sport or DCMS) led to a site inspection by an Energy Assessor in February 2024. The Assessor then provided a series of recommendations for upgrading our lighting and heating systems to make us a more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable site. We used these recommendations to apply for a grant of nearly £150,000 in July 2024 to enable us to deliver the works that would upgrade the heating and the lighting in the building in line with the recommendations. In September 2024 we were delighted to receive notification that we had been successful for the lighting elements of the application. We then started working to deliver the “lighting upgrade project” with our local partners and were guided by Groundwork UK who administered the fund on behalf of the DCMS.
The project is now nearly fully complete and we hope all visitors to our site enjoy the brighter views!
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