External wall cladding ~ How it came to be . . .

From left to right: Mr Nick Murphy (CEO Nottingham City Homes); and St Ann’s ward councillor Dave Liversidge.

My name is Richard Pearson; I am a Co-opted member of Stonebridge Park Tenants & Residents Association (SPTRA), and act on behalf of SPTRA to lobby government departments, companies, and council officers to provide new sources of funding for new improvements to our estate. My aim is to turn our area into a nice place in which to live, and benefit all tenants & residents living here today. I am also the website manager.

Looking around the Stonebridge Park estate today, and seeing all the scaffolding, along with the new wall cladding being fitted to most of the older housing, it is very pleasing to see that all my hard work seeking the funding from energy companies has been rewarded.

It all began nine months ago when Nick Murphy became the new Chief Executive of Nottingham City Homes in November 2011, and joined me on a fact finding tour of Stonebridge in early December. He had the bright idea of using funds from the government’s Community Energy Saving Programme CESP & the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) schemes. In which energy companies pay for the new cladding on owner/occupier properties.

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A few days later at the public meeting of SPTRA, Regeneration managers at Nottingham City Council poured cold water on the idea, and suggested that Stonebridge Park ‘may not qualify under the criteria.’ To qualify St Ann’s & Stonebridge Park had to come within an index of deprivation.

However, I pointed out that the City Council’s own figures showed that the St Ann’s Ward was high on the list for being a poor neighbourhood.

After writing to the Department for Energy & Climate Change, and speaking to St Ann’s Councillor David Liversidge; I established that St Ann’s does qualify for funding under both the CESP & CERT schemes. Unfortunately the number of properties in St Ann’s were few in number on the Index, and Nottingham City Council had already decided to spend all of its available funding on 1,000 properties in wards in the north of the city, including Aspley.

St Ann’s councillor Dave Liversidge then suggested the best way forward was to apply for energy funding through Nottingham Energy Partnership (NEP).

Nick Murphy gave his full support to the proposal and also wrote to Housing Regeneration Manager Mr Mark Lowe at Nottingham City Council offering all the assistance of Nottingham City Homes to help obtain a successful outcome. I also wrote letters to NEP and power companies urging them to provide financial assistance.

Good news came in April 2012 when N.Power agreed to provide about £950,000 under the CESP scheme to fund external wall cladding on the Stonebridge estate. Then local councillor Jon Collins (Leader of Nottingham City Council) made an executive decision in which the City Council topped up this money to make a total fund of £2.9m, so that the whole of our estate would benefit.

E.On then came forward and signed its own contract with the City Council to provide money under the CESP programme to clad 735 ‘no fines’ homes around Nottingham, including a number in St Ann’s.

The difference between the two contracts is that the under the N.Power scheme home owners were being asked to make a contribution of £6,550 towards wall cladding, while under the E.On contract the average price of cladding to all properties was only £5,500. Therefore, home owners on Stonebridge were getting a bad deal. I pointed this out on a number of occasions to City Council officers.

Since then local councillors & managers at Nottingham City Council have worked very hard to obtain additional funding to assist Stonebridge home owners.

At the next full meeting of Nottingham City Council on 9^th September an urgent decision taken by local St Ann’s councillor Dave Liversidge on 25^th July is to be agreed in full.

Councillor David Liversidge, who is the portfolio holder for adults, housing and the community, agreed to provide City Council funds of £99,000 to enable home owners to join the scheme by the August deadline, by reducing the amount home owners would have to contribute for the wall cladding.

Today the average cost of external wall cladding for home owners is just £2,170

Posted by: Richard Pearson