Author: Martin

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Environment Latest News

Park Home Residents are being neglected by Government on heating bills

Winchester Liberal Democrats are today launching a campaign to stop Government neglect of park home residents who are currently unable to apply for many of the grants available aimed at helping people pay their heating bills.

Park home residents are particularly likely to live in fuel poverty (spending 10% or more of their disposable income on heating bills). This is because park homes are particularly expensive to heat and up until 2005 insulation standards weren’t included in the British Standard for park homes with 95% of homes built pre 2005.

Furthermore park home residents generally use bottled gas, LPG, to heat their homes which is one of the most expensive forms of heating fuel. With winter fast approaching many residents will again be fearing that it is simply unaffordable to heat their homes.

Within this context the Government treats park homes differently from others so that the main energy efficiency programmes do not actually benefit park home residents. For example most measures under the Government’s fuel poverty programme Warm Front are not suitable for park homes and to date they have not been included under the main part of the suppliers’ obligation, the Carbon Emissions reductions target (CERT).

There are readily available solutions out there which can help park home residents afford to heat their home and reduce their carbon emissions at the same time. These measures include light weight external wall insulation and low carbon technologies such as air source heat pumps.

Fuel Poverty charity National Energy Action has been involved in developing this package of measures and local MP Mark Oaten together with Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary candidates for Winchester, and the Meon Valley, Martin Tod and Liz Leffman, are taking action to raise the issue.

In Parliament Mark has tabled Early Day Motion 2037 which calls on the Government to treat park home residents the same as any other home owner giving them access to the grants that are out there.

Locally Mark, Liz and Martin will be writing to every park home resident within the constituency telling them about the action and encouraging them to sign a petition to be handed into the Department of Environment, Energy and Climate Change in the near future.

Finally the Winchester Liberal Democrats are bidding for a National Energy Action group pilot study to be carried out on some of the park homes in Winchester and are hopeful that a site can be identified by the council and a positive announcement can be made soon.

Mark Oaten commented:

“By treating park home residents different from other homeowners the Government is neglecting this group of people and making hating their homes and paying for their heating bills all that more difficult.

“It makes no sense to exclude them from government help that others are entitled to. There are solutions out there for park homes so schemes like Warm Front need to be extended out to include these. With winter fast approaching the government needs to take action now and I’m going to keep up the pressure on this.

Lib Dem PPC for Winchester Martin Tod added:

“Climate change is the biggest challenge we face, and everyone should be getting the help they need to cut how much fuel and energy they use. Many park home owners are elderly, which makes it doubly important that they get the same help as everyone else to keep warm and cut their bills.

Liz Leffman, PPC for the Meon Valley, further commented:

“It is unfair that people living in park homes should be forgotten by the Government in this way. Now more than ever it is important that people, particularly the elderly, are able to insulate their homes effectively and cut down on their heating bills. People living in park homes need help with this in the same way as other people do.

The full text of the EDM is below:

EDM 2037: PARK HOMES AND FUEL POVERTY

14.10.2009

Oaten, Mark

That this House notes park home residents across the country are more susceptible to fuel poverty; further notes that park homes are not deemed to be dwellings and do not currently benefit from the majority of the Government’s fuel poverty measures such as Warm Front or the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target; welcomes the recent investment in trials to establish the technical feasibility of products to reduce fuel costs in park homes and applauds National Energy Action and others for their work in this area; and calls on the Government to commit to including park homes within fuel poverty and energy efficiency measures as a priority.

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Chandlers Ford County Council Elections Winchester

Lib Dems beat 2005 results to win 6 out of 7 seats in the new Winchester constituency

How Winchester voted - 2009

On Friday, we found out that we had won 6 out of 7 seats in the new Winchester constituency.

Across the new constituency, the Lib Dem team got 48% of the vote. The Conservative vote slumped to 38%. Labour collapsed to 4%. UKIP got 6% of the vote and the Greens 3%.

These are better results than we achieved at the County Council elections on the same day as we won the 2005 General Election. Compared to 2005, the Lib Dem vote is up. The Conservative vote is down.

Overall, we saw a 4.4% swing from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats compared to our vote last year and a clear swing in our favour compared to the results on General Election day in 2005.

Lib Dem team celebrates results in WinchesterMany congratulations to Jackie Porter, Charlotte Bailey, Brian Collin, Phryn Dickens, Peter Mason and Alan Broadhurst on their victories and many thanks to Terry Holden-Brown for his commitment and hard work on the campaign in Chandler’s Ford.

A big thank you to the voters who decided to back our candidates. We also owe a huge debt to the staff and volunteers who worked so incredibly hard over the preceding months, and to our exceptional candidates for their incredible commitment and hard work over the last few months and years. There’s no doubt that their personal work played a pivotal part in our success on Thursday.

It still hasn’t fully sunk in, but these results put us in very good spirits for the General Election campaign – whenever it may come.

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Housing Winchester

A big thank you to everyone who sponsored the ‘Big Sleep Out’

Morning after the Big Sleep Out in WinchesterThank you to everyone who gave so generously to members of the Lib Dem Sleep Out team (or anyone else!) as part of the Big Sleep Out.

Thanks to your generosity the Lib Dem team has so far raised more than £3,800 towards the Nightshelter and the Trinity Centre!  

Big Sleep Out, Winchester, 2009We almost all got rather heavily rained on and didn’t sleep too well from around 3 a.m. onwards, but it was great to be part of such a well-organised and successful fundraising event for such a good cause. And, after all, no matter how wet we got, sleeping out on one damp night in May is nothing like having to do it through the winter or for weeks or months on end. We all knew we had dry homes and beds to go home to afterwards. The important thing was that we raised as much money as possible to help people who don’t have that choice.

Earlier in the evening, there were an excellent series of talks and speeches moderated by Debbie Thrower, who also read a very thought-provoking text on her own account (which I unfortunately didn’t note the source down for).  It was particularly moving hearing from people like Ed Mitchell who had been rough sleepers, how charities like the Winchester Churches Nightshelter and the Trinity Centre had helped them get their lives back on track.  (You can buy Ed Mitchell’s book here if you would like to know more).

There are some good pictures and reports on the Sleep Out at the main Big Sleep Out website.  If you’re interested, you can also read the live Twitter reports of the evening.

Even though the evening is over, it remains an urgent cause and both charities are very stretched by high demand. 60 people a month are turned away by the Night Shelter due to lack of space. On average, 20 of the 50 people who use the Trinity Centre report that they slept rough the night before.

If you’d like to donate to the Big Sleep Out by sponsoring the Lib Dem team, you can do so at http://www.justgiving.com/martintod. You can also give directly without sponsoring anyone. Either way, every penny you give (plus Gift Aid) goes straight to the two charities and will help make a real difference.

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Uncategorized

Reducing education to a single number

A few nights ago, I was watching the BBC’s “This Week” and getting more and more annoyed about the comparison that was being made between state and private education and their respective A-level results.

In the end, it doesn’t do justice to any school to reduce their results to a single measure, and A/AS-level results can never be the only measure of a good secondary education.

But if that’s the game we’re playing, here is another ‘single measure’ from Hampshire.

Our local state 6th form college, Peter Symonds, helps more young people get through A/AS-levels with a higher average A/AS points score than every single independent school in Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight combined.

Continue reading “Reducing education to a single number”
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Winchester

Punishing bankers: the Winchester solution

A short excerpt from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (with thanks to a Private Eye, a Private Eye reader called Colin Knox – and an unnamed chronicler):

A.D. 1125.

In this year sent the King Henry, before Christmas, from Normandy to England, and bade that all the mint-men that were in England should be mutilated in their limbs; that was, that they should lose each of them the right hand, and their testicles beneath. This was because the man that had a pound could not lay out a penny at a market. And the Bishop Roger of Salisbury sent over all England, and bade them all that they should come to Winchester at Christmas. When they came thither, then were they taken one by one, and deprived each of the right hand and the testicles beneath. All this was done within the twelfth-night. And that was all in perfect justice, because that they had undone all the land with the great quantity of base coin that they all bought.