On May 15th we reached a key milestone in our project, the re-opening of our Tithe Barn.  Visit the Sproughton Tithe Barn website now for information about it and the re-opening celebrations.

Thanks to everyone who took part in our carbon footprint and travel surveys.  The data has been collected and processed.  Read the terms and conditions for the holiday prizes.

The Green Sproughton initiative is two and a half years old!  We formed following a Carbon Sense presentation and workshop on March 15th 2007, formally becoming a panel of Sproughton Parish Council on May 8th.

Although we have only been going a short while we have achieved a lot over this period.  Our most significant achievement has been the prize of £150,000 to insulate our Tithe Barn plus address household energy saving.  This came from EEDA’s innovative Cut Your Carbon campaign which we supported the launch of in March 2008, including a significant 25% contribution from Suffolk County Council’s green fund.  Green Sproughton is featured as a case study to encourage other communities to follow our lead.  Following our carbon footprint survey we entered their competition to win financial support and were one of a handful of projects to win.  Our action plan is consuming much energy - of the intellectual  and physical kinds!  Other milestones include:

On February 12th 2008 Simon Curl and Peter Lee attended the ‘Suffolk - creating the greenest county’ conference at Adastral Park, collecting a greenest community award for outstanding work to communicate environmental issues.

On March 13th Jonas Grist from CRed Suffolk and Babergh District Council presented preliminary feedback about our carbon footprint survey.  Shockingly half of our CO2 emissions are from transport, which is twice the national average!  Visit the ‘Action’ page for a few initial ideas to cut our carbon.  The report is published on our ‘Downloads’ page.  Some households requested individual feedback and in addition we have arranged talks and surgeries with experts.

On April 26th we had our first Spring Green Sproughton event including a litter pick, supported by 20 volunteers, plus plant sale in the Tithe Barn with refreshments.

A number of presentations have been given to our own community and to others, which have been well received.  External audiences include: the the Suffolk Association of Local Councils, Western Suffolk Local Strategic Partnership, Greener Framlingham, Bures St. Mary Parish Council, the Suffolk Show as part of the ‘Suffolk - creating the greenest county’ stand, the Cut Your Carbon academy in Cambridge and the Energy Savings Trust community action event in Oxford.

A larger version of our timeline, shown below, can be downloaded GreenSproughton3.jpg (384 Kb).