Wanted – cold and damp house stories
Looking ahead to the colder autumn and winter days and the serious problems some families face, we’re so fortunate to have agencies coming into The Well café in Kibworth to help people who are struggling to pay their bills and heat their homes. The Foodbank is another great blessing for people who have hit rock bottom.
How can we have quicker, cheaper energy? New oil and gas licences sold to foreign companies from the Rosebank oil field won’t come on stream for 20 – 30 years, Greenpeace says. Whereas windfarms, on land or in the oceans, and solar panels are much quicker to build. They have their own issues it’s true. The big advantage is that the supplies can be much closer to home and are already cheaper to produce. Will we build our own wind turbines in our villages one day soon?
Uninsulated homes, especially in villages with old farm buildings and housing, and heating bills that are beyond the amount people on low incomes can pay, are grave injustices recognised by the Friends of the Earth national campaign group. They have a campaign especially dedicated to these issues.
Working together, Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire (CALL) and Harborough Climate Action and Friends have a petition to our MPs, requesting that the Government gives adequate amounts of money to the low paid and urging the Government to rapidly insulate people’s heat leaking homes. Their final demand is to urge a transition from oil and gas to renewable energy.
Our petition is here actionnetwork.org/petitions/ask-leics-mps-for-warm-homes-action?source=foe-email is 600 strong and counting. We are also collecting people’s stories about their cold and/or damp homes. Contact me at faganjulie@yahoo.co.uk for a simple questionnaire to share your story with me, or leave your story in The Well foodbank for me to collect. To find out about keeping warm, come along to the public meeting on Wednesday 4October in the Methodist Church, in Northampton Rd, Market Harborough at 7pm.
Together we can make a difference.
Julie Fagan, volunteer, Sustainable Harborough Community and Eco Church member
Letter to HDC Planning Enforcement
