supported by…
At the beginning of February we met with Paul Martin of Kabin who took us through the process of deciding which legal structure was appropriate for us.
The outcome was that SHARE should be a Social Enterprise, incorporated as an Industrial and Provident Society (a society for the benefit of the community, commonly referred to as a BenCom). The simplest and cheapest way to get incorporated is to have three founding members, proposed as Geoff Hardman, Peter Tulloch and myself. Others will be able to join once SHARE is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority. Paul is dealing directly with CooperativesUK on our behalf and reckons that the process will be completed in a couple of weeks. The cost of registration will be funded by our energyfund Cornwall grant and Paul’s support is part of the free Powering-up Communities training and mentoring package available to Cornish Community energy groups.
To date, there have been two training sessions from Powering-up Communities. The first session was a salutary reminder of the effects of climate change. The consequences of not limiting the increase in our CO2 emissions are horrible. It’s also easier to act now rather than trying to catch up in a few years’ time. This session ended with a workshop on the cost of energy and the CO2 emissions from our own communities. The sheets from the workshop are available on the SHARE page of the South Hill Connection website with the data collected from the parish household energy survey that we made this time last year. Please take a look at the calculations here…
Each year, in South Hill parish we spend £378,000 heating and powering our homes and we produce over 2,000 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide. We will be able to use this information to decide the best way of saving money and reducing our output of CO2.
The second training session was on selecting a structure. Although we have already done that, it was useful to be reminded of why we chose to be a BenCom.
The next two free training sessions are in Bodmin on Saturday 11th April. The morning session on Technical Feasibility starts at 9.30am and the afternoon session is on Planning. I’m sure there is a free lunch in there too! If you would like to attend, let me know so that we can share transport with those who have already said they are going.
David Skelton