Our whole group meeting was on Tuesday 16th April, in The Globe Community Library, North Road Stokesley, from 7:30 – 9:00 pm. As well as hearing updates from the various sub-groups we focused on planning activities for Great Big Green Week (8-16 June).
Energy
The Local Energy Area Demonstrator (LEAD) Programme
LEAD is launching after the Mayoral election. There will be launch meetings organised by the main project partner (Align Property Partners) on 28th May in Stokesley Town Hall at 6.30pm and on 12th June in the Discovery Centre, Great Ayton at 6.30pm. We are also looking into having a market stall in Stokesley on 24th June to generate further interest
CASaV’s role is to promote LEAD locally (i.e. find people who are interested in free energy advice) and promote the events. Posters should be available in mid-May, so looking for CASaV member volunteers to put up event posters local to them.
Mark and Joanna met with Susan Manson, Community Energy Development Officer at North East & Yorkshire Net Zero Hub, she is working on a number North East and Yorkshire LEAD projects. She suggested CASaV could look for ideas / approaches from Community Energy England (CEE), more locally Circular Malton & Norton and the North Yorkshire Council Climate Change Officer (Jos Holmes). There is a need to consider the level of ambition of energy saving we should be mainly focusing on so not total lifestyle changes (1 room living), rather making people’s homes more comfortable and energy efficient, so some whole house retrofits, with the main focus on simple measures that save some money and make there homes more comfy.
To find out more about retrofitting locally, NESTA have a “Visit a Heat Pump” project running until July 2024, to which a number of CASaV members have signed up and our website has a number of home energy case studies.
Food
The Premier shop in Ayton is now contributing to the food share which we distribute nightly. Currently it provides more than all the Co-ops combined.
The group are have been in contact with Quorn with a view to doing some activity during Big Green Week, nothing has been agreed as yet. CASaV will have a presence at Great Ayton Fete on 9th June.
The Stokesley bus stop garden now has a selection of herbs.
Nature
It is planned to organise a number of visit to Anne Heard’s wildflower garden in Ingleby Greenhow.
A guided walk will take place at 10.30am on 1st May led by Anne Press, along Ingleby Bank Foot.
The Nature group are also becoming more involved in the Dark Skies initiative, with more activity to occur towards September as the nights get darker.
No Mow May is happening in Stokesley again.
The Nature Group has also been looking a producing some 10 point action plans for encourage people to take action for nature to complement the CASaV Leaflets.
Transport
Barry highlighted the absence of joined up thinking in the North Yorkshire Transport strategy.
The transport group activity engages with government in order to nudge them towards climate friendly actions. Barry Warrington attended the North Yorkshire Council’s Transport Strategy Consultative Process meeting on 20th October 2023, his notes are here (231020NYC Local Transport Strategy Consultative Process), our of this process will emerge a local transport plan which was tabled at the NYC Executive meeting on 18th December (Update on the development of the new Local Transport Plan approval to publish public engagement) since then NYC has produced further updates on the plan – (14th February 2024 -Update on the Development of the New Local Transport Plan.pdf).
Transport has also been a key part of the new York and North Yorkshire Mayor, with a transport hustings being held on 19th March 2024, which Barry attended, you can read Barry’s impressions here (Zoom Meeting 19th March 2024 Mayoral Hustings Meeting) .
Moorsbus will start on 29th June, with timetable / routes for 2024 still being finalised, but details will be similar to 2023. Please use it or loose it.
Waste
CASaV now has 2 Eco-banners (https://eco-banners.co.uk): the pop-up banners are made of fully recyclable materials, polyester which can be recycled with PET bottles and the frame is made of wood.
Repair Cafe: 76 items repaired on Saturday 13th April in Stokesley, where we joined by 3 people who are planning to help with Middlesbrough Repair Cafe, which we are supporting to get started. Kate, Jane, Joanna and Sarah part of the Repair Cafe sewing team helped the Explorer scouts to convert old tents into new aprons and duffle bags.
Mend in Public – 20th April – https://www.fashionrevolution.org/frw-24-mend-in-public-day/ – while we can’t do an event on Saturday, we hope to do something as part of Great Big Green Week.
Books – The Climate Action Stokesley and Villages Book Bank is now up and running, you can find all the details on https://casav.uk/books. Currently the books are moving around, we are looking into options of keeping the books possibly at the Globe. There are also details of how you can share your books as part of the CASaV Book Bank. Simon will look into whether the books could be hosted by the library. Of course don’t forget to search our local libraries catalogues to see if they have a book you are interested in, while they don’t have a huge collection of physical books these are complemented by e-books, plus we can ask them to purchase books we think would be appropriate.
Environment and Climate Osmotherley
The newly formed Environment and Climate Osmotherley has decided to become a group of CASaV.
Saturday Coffee mornings in the Methodist Church in Osmotherley have proved to be successful with wide ranging discussions on climate issues and an opportunity to survey the villages views with a questionaire about grass cutting – so far with 14:1 in favour of longer grass and an opportunity to sign up 3 new members. The next planned coffee morning is on Saturday 27th April at 10am.
While there is interest in running a Repair Cafe in Osmotherley, there aren’t sufficient volunteers in Osmotherley, so the names will be passed to Stokesley and Villages Repair Cafes.
Next meeting Environment and Climate Osmotherley 1st May – plan for Great Big Green Week events and the new green Osmotherley show categories.
Great Big Green Week 8 – 16 June
During Great Big Green week CASaV is looking to both hold events and enable others to hold events, so please get in touch if you know of others who want to be involved. See what others did in 2023 – GBGW 2023 Highlights.
A number of events are already planned:
- 8th June – Repair Cafe in Stokesley with some of the repairing happening as a “Mending in Public”, sewers sat on the benches on the High Street, perhaps with the CASaV photoframe to allow all to capture the moment.
- 8th June – CASaV stall at the Great Ayton Fair
- 8th June – Nature Group trips to Ingleby Greenhow wildflower garden.
- Possibly 16th June – further opportunity to visit Ingleby Greenhow wildflower garden.
- All week rotating displays – Globe, Discovery Centre, Labman, Quorn, Station Coffee & Kitchen – LEAD, Plastic, Dark Skies, CASaV, Climate Justice
Guisborough Eco-Group (GEG)
GEG holds regular meetings at 4pm on the first or second Monday of the month in Guisborough Library which include talks on subjects of interest.
The last meeting has a talk from Stronger Shores where they heard how kelp, sea-grass and oysters capture carbon, help to reduce plastic waste and reduce coastal erosion.
Future talks are planned on bats and retrofitting.
Other Events of Interest
16th April Simon attended – Rivers Trust Conference: Embracing River Buffers – Agenda: Welcome and Opening Remarks, The Rivers Trust 20 Years On, Through the Keyhole: Around the nations, Breaking Down the Barriers, Empowering farmers and land managers for cleaner waterways, Beyond the Buffer: Piecing together mosaic habitats, Closing Remarks.
Recordings of Zoom sessions: Link may not work for others? will hopefully be on YouTube in due course.
The conference focused on river buffers, with a lot of talk of how difficult it was for farmers to deal with the changes that are required to protect rivers. I was surprised that only some farmers realise that improved environmental condition of a farm was key to help with the agriculture too in the long term at least. The River Trusts find it difficult to get their message across to many farmers, there are exceptions especially where groups of farmers have realised that they can apply for many catchment related grants. It seems that River Trusts are largely only successful where the economics works for individual land owners, i.e. subsidies and grants drive action.
Climate Action Stokesley and Villages 