The REALL Legacy
REALL (Renewable Energy at Local Level) began its life in June 2002. Funded by the Countryside Agency, ONE Northeast and the SEED fund (part of the National Lottery), as a programme to assist local community groups to bring forward their own renewable energy schemes, using the energy from the sun, water, the wind and wood fuel. The project operated throughout Northumberland and County Durham.
Groups that REALL have worked with include: village hall committees, voluntary groups of all kinds, parish councils, schools, small businesses which play an essential economic role in a rural area, groups of residents, and new groups set up to run schemes.
Funding was due to cease at the end of March 2006 but at the eleventh hour the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) came forward with some funding for current advisory teams thus enabling a continuation of the project, for a limited amount of time. Shortly after REALL’s project manager left to pursue his own consultancy business followed within a few months by the project administrator due to a family move south.
With mounting uncertainties about future funding it was difficult to attract and retain replacement staff. CAN therefore arranged for North Energy Associates Ltd. to continue the project until March 2007. Work was done in finalising the current projects that REALL staff had been working on, together with updating the various information sheets and case studies that had been on the REALL page of CAN’s website. These updated sheets are now available to community groups in Northumberland who can obtain hard copies from our Morpeth office or any of our Community Development officers or can download them from this page. and can access them on our website www.ca-north.org.
Though the REALL project has now ceased there is a REALL legacy remaining which will assist communities for some time to come. To view a useful guidance note and a number of informative case studies which involved REALL at some point please go to the page on Community Renewable Energy in the Library section of the site.
