Back in 2022, we were appointed as the Climate Support Partner to the Big Local programme and we were delighted to have the opportunity to support resident-led change with communities across England. Flash forward two years, we’ve learnt a lot and feel proud to have been a part of some amazing climate action across England.

The image above shows CSE’s Harriet and Tess helping Big Local communities explore their hopes for climate action.

First, a bit of background …

In 2011 Big Local gave £1m to 150 communities across England that have had very little lottery funding to date. The funding was ‘no strings attached’ – as long as it is used to address local needs and priorities. Sounds pretty amazing, right?

Big Local is the largest single endowment ever made by the Lottery Community and one of the most trail-blazing funding programmes in terms of resident-led change. Big Local communities have developed over the years to tackle loneliness, encourage healthier lifestyles, improve employment opportunities and help to create spaces for the community to come together.

We’ve supported ten Big Local communities to include climate action within their achievements. We share some highlights below.

Improving energy awareness and tackling fuel poverty — DY10

Big Local DY10 identified that fuel poverty was affecting their residents and wanted to do what they could to ensure that local people got the advice they needed. We worked with Anna, DY10’s Support Officer, to best understand how we could embed energy awareness within their community. Anna said that DY10 had strong links with another local support organisation, Home Start, so we decided to build capacity within an already established organisation.

Home-Start supports young families and children through challenging times with a befriending service, group activity sessions and financial support. With the help of DY10, CSE trained up Home-Start volunteers with our 3-hour Energy Essentials training. The training session showed volunteers how to spot the signs of fuel poverty, give basic energy advice and signpost them to further advice and grant schemes.

Thank you so much! I found the energy essentials training so very useful on a personal, as well as a professional level.

Home-Start volunteer

We also attended one of Home-Start’s after-school group activity sessions and ran a Make your own draught-proofing snake workshop. This demonstrated a cheap and easy way to stop draughts in the home with plenty of glitter and stickers for the children to have fun with too!

We also helped DY10 run a social media campaign to raise awareness about energy. We helped them create a 6 week social media plan for their channels with myth-busting, top tips and helpful resources. They finished with a competition to win a slow cooker, which got everyone’s attention!

We hope our support for DY10 means that energy awareness is firmly established within the community and that residents know they can get the support they need. DY10 Big Local ended in July 2024, you can check out their many achievements here.

Supporting community building retrofit — March and Micklefield

One of Marsh and Micklefield Big Local’s priorities was to improve the energy efficiency of community buildings in the area to reduce their environmental impact and ensure they remain well-used community assets for decades to come.

Partnership member Jean approached CSE to help improve one of their community centres. Jean explained that the centre was often difficult and expensive to heat and that users complained of it being cold. We worked with Jean and other partnership members to develop an action plan to retrofit the centre, including a walk-around survey of the building. Jean, along with two volunteers, Ian and Vanessa, recorded key issues that needed tackling. Jean then produced a report, highlighting the key issues. Based on Jean’s report, the Big Local partnership agreed they would provide financial support for making energy efficiency improvements to the building.

I see this as a real step forward in investing in our community buildings, not just for current and future residents, but also the environment.

Jean, Marsh and Micklefield Big Local partnership member

Supporting youth climate action — Heart of Pitsea

We supported Heart of Pitsea Big Local by helping their youth group’s climate ambassadors find new ways to reach out to their community. The ambassadors’ weekly litter pick was successful, but they also wanted to help local residents with the cost-of-living crisis. We worked with Tracey, a youth worker from Heart of Pitsea, and gave her some more ideas about activities for the climate ambassadors. Using CSE’s energy advice, they created flyers for their community with helpful energy-saving tips.

Collectively, they distributed 5,000 flyers around their neighbourhood, through letterboxes and on noticeboards, showing that young people in Pitsea want to help their community and they have the energy and ideas to make that happen.

Heart of Pitsea has always made young people a key part of their plans. For example, by setting up a youth forum to guide decisions and allocating the forum funding for each year. You can find out more about their work here.

What next?

We’re excited to carry on some of this fantastic work through our partnership with Locality. We’ll be supporting Big Local communities through Locality’s asset support offer. Our support will focus on energy efficiency and retrofit of community buildings. Find out more here.