Community Power Podcast Series 1 Episode 4: Climate-proofing communities in North Bristol

Episode 4: Climate-proofing communities in North Bristol

Chris Allen

Hello and welcome to the Community Power Podcast, a weekly series brought to you by the Community Wealth Fund campaign in partnership with Local Trust. My name’s Chris Allen, and in this series, we’re showcasing some incredible projects, focusing in particular on what happens when you give local people the money, the power and the assets to make a difference to their own communities. With me is series producer Beth Lazenby. Beth, this is an incredibly ambitious project this week. 

Beth Lazenby

Yeah, definitely. And we’re actually going south for the first time, to the southwest. So you’ll be going down to Lawrence Weston, which is a suburb of Bristol, and they’re going to be talking all about some of their projects around climate action. 

Chris Allen

Indeed. Thanks, Beth. Mark Pepper is a local resident, but he’s also the development manager for Ambition Lawrence Weston. First of all, I ask Mark to tell us a little bit about where he lives and works. 

Mark Pepper

We think, the residents of Lawrence Weston, it’s a fantastic area. Not everyone’s got that perception of the area because of poverty and deprivation that goes on. Lawrence Weston basically is on the outskirts of Bristol in the north. We’re a population of around about 7200 people sharing around about 3200 homes. We’ve got quite good transport links, although the quality of housing is quite poor, and like I say, we’ve historically been hindered with high levels of poverty and deprivation. We’ve got four LSOA [Lower layer Super Output Areas] areas in the small area that is Lawrence Weston or we did have until Big Local come along, and now we’ve got three. Now that may just be a coincidence, but I’ve got the underlying suspicion that it’s not coincidence, and that Big Local is doing some great work. 

Chris Allen

Well, if things go the wrong way, often with data, you get blamed for it. So it was going the right way, then, you know, celebrate it. I would say, take the credit. 

Mark Pepper

Claim it. Yeah, definitely. 

Chris Allen

Absolutely. Now, you mentioned there Big Local coming along, then obviously putting a million pounds into the community, and you’re saying that’s made quite a difference. 

Mark Pepper

That’s made a massive difference, to be honest. I mean, regeneration programmes have been tried for Lawrence Weston in the past, and unfortunately, failed to some degree. To a massive degree, really. So things like SRB, Neighbourhood Renewal and more locally, Neighbourhood Partnerships, where we’ve received a small amount of funding, but that funding was never put in the hands of residents. That funding was to deliver other organisations or stakeholders’ agendas, if you will, and outcomes. But the beauty of Big Local as you know, that power is handed directly into the hands of residents. So we’ve got a lot more freedom and flexibility on how we spend that money to solve our own problems, you know, we’ve been dealing with for many, many years. And not just the problems, but also to take benefit of the opportunities that we’ve seen in the local area for a long, long time. 

Chris Allen

Now, yes, that was your starting point, really. But then you’ve used that to be ambitious, and especially ambitious around the environment, around climate change, and also, you know, establishing other organisations that have come on the back of Big Local to help sustain the work that you do? 

Mark Pepper

Yeah, definitely. And I mean, don’t get me wrong, climate was a million miles away from our thought processes eight years ago. It was a million miles away from our thought process up to about a year, two years ago. And I think the reason for that was the fact that we felt we had more pressing priorities as a local community. And you know, you know, we hear that the ice caps are melting thousands of miles away, but we also know that the food in our freezers are melting just down the road because we can’t, you know, we’re suffering from fuel poverty. So we try to engage the ones more aware of climate change and how it’s going to affect especially areas like ours, more deprived areas more vulnerable to the climate changes, if you will. We did struggle to try and get any engagement around climate. As soon as we mentioned climate, they sort of backed off a little bit. 

Chris Allen

What can we do down here? 

Mark Pepper

Yeah, exactly.

Chris Allen

“We’re more worried about the dog poo, actually, to be honest. That’s our environment.” 

Mark Pepper

Exactly, and the residents that are involved in Ambition Lawrence Weston in the planning group and the other groups. We felt exactly the same, until we stepped back and thought hang on a minute. ​“What is it we want? What are our priorities?” And they’re so interlinked. So what is it we wanted? We wanted good quality housing. We want affordable housing. We wanted to get rid of fuel poverty. We wanted fresh food, you know. We wanted a nice-looking place, lots of plants, lots of wildlife. Until you, you know, take a breath and step back and then realise, ​“well, hang on a minute. That’s exactly what climate is.” You can’t get away from climate. Everything we’re doing, it’s got a climate, you know, take on it. So, for example, we’ve got a gardening group. So we’ve got lots of residents that want to go round and beautify the area, make it look a lot more pretty. You know, that’s going to affect the biodiversity of the area. But they don’t know that. 

So what we do is we engage with the residents around their own passions, their own priorities, and we’ll say, ​“Right we’ll help you deliver that. You know, you’ve got money. This money belongs to you. What tools do you need? What equipment do you need, what resources do you need? We can provide that.” Then we get their engagement. We’ve got a, you know, a captive audience, and then we can say, ​“Brilliant, that you’re doing those priorities and those passions that you know you’re so hooked on. But did you know, by bringing in this plant, that plant and the other plant, not only are you beautifying the areas that you’re beautifying, but you’re also having a massive positive effect on the biodiversity?.” 

So that’s the stance we’ve taken, though, for like the past two years. Is still concentrating and delivering the residents’ own priorities, changing that narrative a little bit, so it’s a little bit more close to home, if you will, you know. Or we’ve got a neighbourhood development plan, which gives us a lot more power around on how things are built. And it just so happens that we’re praying for a lot of housing development, which we’re really positive about, but we’re positive about that as long as it’s built in the right way. We’ve got other policies in there to ensure that every house in Lawrence Weston that gets built from now on, it’s got things like ground source heat pumps. It’s got solar panels on the roof. It’s got EV charging points. The houses are as built to as passive standard as possible. Again, that not necessarily to do with climate. We’re not trying to save the planet. That’s to try and save some pennies in our pockets. 

Chris Allen

It all ties together, as you say. There’s an educational process going on here as well, isn’t it, perhaps, for the local people, that what they do and how they impact perhaps on the local needs of the area, how they make it more beautiful, how they then perhaps save money in the home, on the cost as well, is all helping the planet as well. And I imagine children, young people. It’s a great project, this, isn’t, it for getting them involved in their insights as well, moving forward?

Mark Pepper

Without a doubt. And to be honest, for the want of a better word we use the young people and the children, to then gain their parents engagement and to deliver that. 

Chris Allen

It works well. It works well. 

Mark Pepper

Definitely.

Chris Allen

Now you didn’t just sort of, you know, plant a few bulbs here and flowers and make and beautify — I love that word — the place.You did a bit more than that, to be fair. What else have you done? 

Mark Pepper

Yeah, we’ve done a lot more, to be honest. And again, it is more by accident, by, uh, direct sort of intentions. So the reason why Ambition Lawrence Weston came about, a community energy group come along, and they said, ​“You’ve got some lovely fields there. We’d love to whack some solar panels on them”. And we said, ​“Yeah, that’s fine. We’d love to do that. But what’s in it for us? What’s in it for local residents? You’re going to take an asset.” So we did a deal with Bristol energy cooperative, whereupon we now receive 50% of the profits that they make. That triggered an idea, hang on, there could be money in this renewable energy lark. So on the basis of that, we’ve been working hard now, for the past six years to deliver England’s biggest wind turbine, which will be community owned by the residents of Lawrence Weston and again, like I say, Chris, that wasn’t to save the planet. That was because we could see the economic opportunities there. At the same time, we realised and appreciated the climate benefits as well. We’re also planning to put a training centre in the bottom of that wind turbine and deliver live data into schools to show them exactly how much energy their wind turbine is producing. We’ll have a little classroom at the bottom to schools and students and other educational organisations can run educational visits and trips. 

Chris Allen

Excellent. Congratulations on that. And you talk there about, ​“Oh, we didn’t set out to do that”, and that was, you know, a bit of a byproduct here. But it sounds to me that there’s this kind of organic process going on here of people communicating with each other and learning as you go along. And that’s how you’ve achieved the growth and you’ve achieved with the amazing things that you’re producing in Lawrence Weston? 

Mark Pepper

Oh, definitely, without a shadow of doubt, Chris, and again, I can’t emphasise how valuable the Big Local spending has been, because we’ve been able to buy in those consultants, that experience and that knowledge that we didn’t have before. The skill set in Lawrence Weston is quite low compared to other areas of Bristol. So a lot of the projects we’re doing, we’re building 38 affordable, energy efficient homes. We’re building a brand new £2.5 million pound Community Centre for the social infrastructure. It’s going to be highly energy efficient. It’s going to be a showcase for all the different renewable technologies that are out there, and we hope to deliver a renewable energy and modern methods of construction skills academy from that building. And again, we can’t do any of that unless we have the resources to bring in those consultants, to bring in those skills, those architects, that the Big Local has allowed us to do basically. 

Chris Allen

What are the key elements do you think in terms of now going beyond Big Local, beyond March 2026, that’ll help you know to keep the levelling up going on, which you’re actually achieving at a local, community level? 

Mark Pepper

To be honest, Chris, when we realised that, you know, the times of charities and grants being given out were decreasing, and that we really needed to think seriously about generating our own economic sustainability. So every project that the residents wanted to see us deliver, or demanded for us to deliver, we’ve always looked at that project, right? We’ll deliver it first, and then we’ll look at it and see how, possibly, if at all that project, or you know that outcome, can lend itself to generating economic sustainability. Our journey was a journey of consultation, really finding out what it was residents felt about the area, what they wanted to see improved, what was not so good, what was already good. 

So we did a massive door knocking operation where we door knocked every resident, give them a massive survey to fill out, like we get a lot of visits from people saying, ​“Can this be replicated in other areas?” And most definitely can. In my opinion, as long as you put the power into the resident hands and those resources, you’ll be surprised how motivated and engaged they become and how empowered they feel, and the confidence it gives us as well to go out and do that. I think some tips for other areas is, don’t do what we did in the beginning. All we did was lambast everyone and get quite confrontational with you know, stakeholders and decision makers. We’ve now learned that by delivering what they want as well as what we want, you get a better outcome. Always consider compromise. I mean, when we first started, it is, we wanted that, and that was the end of it. But listening, communicating with those stakeholders and decision makers has put us in good stead I think. 

Chris Allen

Let’s talk numbers then, you know. £100,000 pounds a year, roughly Big Local has realised. As you move forward, what’s the kind of income you’re able to now use as essentially a social enterprise? You’re still doing social good, but you’ve got the enterprise element, which is bringing money in. What are you able to sustain the same level, beyond Big Local or is it going to grow? Or, you don’t know yet? 

Mark Pepper

Our wind turbine is our, you know, golden goose, if you will. And we can expect anything from £150,000 to 300,000 a year income from that. So that will last for 25 years. So that’s quite big in itself. But then I think you need to look at the other investment that we bought in the area. So we bought a supermarket in the area when they said it couldn’t be done. That was that was millions of pounds worth of investment. Some of the changes we’ve made with the housing, we’ve been very pro-development for housing, providing the housing suits our need, providing the residents benefit from it. So there’s around about another 20 million pounds worth of housing that’d be coming into the area. We’ve changed the bus service. We’ve put pressure on the bus service to deliver a public transport service that they never did to the places of employment. So we can now access more jobs and more opportunities. If there’s any opportunities to create economic sustainability, big organisations and big private business come in with the capital to take advantage of those straight away, whereas we can’t. So we’re, you know, the low hanging fruit is all always gobbled up by private industry and those with the capital. So that leaves us a little bit, you know, at a disadvantage. Where we have got the advantage is in our power as local residents, with our voice. 

Chris Allen

A key outcome of Big Local and you described Lawrence Weston, you know, very well earlier, in terms of the way, the way the community was, the way it was seen. Do people see the community now differently? You know, after this, nearly 10 years of developing or that, you sort of say, ​“Oh, look at that big thing over there”. And is it seen as an asset to the community. Do the people sort of say, ​“Hey, this is this is this is good. We like living here more than we used to”? 

Mark Pepper

Well, Bristol, as a local authority, do a quality of life [survey] every couple of years, and we’ve seen, you know, the quality of life, or the people’s perception that their quality of life in Lawrence Weston, increase, which is a good thing. I think, you know, we don’t have direct contact, as such, with every resident, so it’s difficult to sort of gauge whether or not they feel that the area is definitely increasing, improving. All I can say is that the local groups and social infrastructure is increasing. People are getting more involved. There’s more volunteering going on. Lawrence Weston was always a place you were sent to when it came to housing, and not choose to live, and just gauging by the amount of private built developments, open market housing is being built and gobbled up and really taken up quickly. Aside from the crisis of housing, I think that’s quite a good statement, that not only do residents feel in the area is improving, but outsiders feel the same as well. There’s little old me who’s lived in Lawrence West all my life being invited to COP 26 which was quite an experience. So that was the residents being invited. We’ve had our name mentioned in the House of Commons just a couple of, couple of weeks ago. So you know, from somewhere that nobody knew anything of, to something that is leading the way, there’s a lot of residents who feel extremely proud of Lawrence Weston now. 

Chris Allen

That’s Mark Pepper from Lawrence Weston Big Local. Fascinating project, and it’s going to keep money coming in in the future. Where can people find out more information Beth? 

Beth Lazenby

In the show notes, we’re going to be linking to their website and also some of their actual climate action plans so that people can have a look at those for themselves. 

Chris Allen

Thanks, Beth. And there will be another Community Power Podcast next week. The Series is brought to you by the Community Wealth Fund campaign, in partnership with Local Trust, focusing on what happens when you give local people the money, the power, and the assets to make a difference to their own neighbourhoods.