Your Hertfordshire Rural Affairs and Community News Bulletin
Welcome to our November 2022 eBulletin
Click the Pic above for Herts Public Health Information
Click Here to view the eBulletin on our CDA Herts website
Herts Village Halls and Community Buildings Consortium
Annual Meeting and Conference
Little Hadham Village HallFriday 25th November 2022
9.00am to 2.00pm
The Conference will be the usual mix of engaging content and presentations this year featuring Energy advice from Utility Aid, rural outreach with Samaritans and national updates and Village Halls Week 2023 from ACRE. There will be Village Halls presenting Case Studies. There will be the usual Market Place Stands with some of our regulars and new supporters and we will have a demonstration from Forever Cycling - not to be missed! All this is finished off with our usual delicious Buffet Lunch and more opportunity to network and browse the Stands.
The Conference will be a hybrid event as last year so participants will also be able to join on Zoom from home. All content will be made available afterwards including we hope video recordings of the presentations. The Zoom details will be shared separately.
Contact tim.hayward-smith@cdaherts.org.uk for queries or information.
New ‘Warm Spaces’ directory launched in Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire County Council, and the county’s ten district and borough councils, have launched a new directory of public spaces and buildings which people can use as warm, welcoming spaces as temperatures drop.
This online directory will let people find libraries, family centres, village halls and community spaces near them where they can stay safe and warm. Many will also be running additional activities to provide people with the opportunity to meet others and take part in events such as slipper swaps for older people in libraries and stay and play events in family centres for families with young children. To support this initiative there is £100,000 worth of funding available to local community groups, with grants of up to £2,000 to help them provide welcoming indoor spaces this winter. The funding can be used to cover energy bills, staff time, venue hire as well as other relevant costs such as transport to the venue.
Our licensing and enforcement officers co-ordinated a joint operation with Hertfordshire Police’s East Herts Rural Safer Neighbourhood Team last week (Wednesday, 26 October) to target companies not carrying the necessary licences to dispose of waste safely, and individuals using dangerous, unroadworthy vehicles in the district with great results.
Click the Pic to watch a quick video of aerial shots of the construction phase now underway.
Roof Off And Stage Set At Hertford Theatre
Work on the growth and legacy development of Hertford Theatre - to transform it into a thriving hub for arts and culture - is progressing well with enabling works complete and first phase of construction now underway.
Green Heat Co-op is a non-profit, co-operative company focussed on the transition away from fossil fuels to high efficiency, low carbon, high comfort home heating systems. We are based in Royston and serve Herts, Cambs and surrounding areas. We are keen to have the involvement of residents, heating engineers and building professionals. If you are interested in joining as a member, get in touch.
Reducing your home emissions with a Heat Pump - Tuesday 6th Dec 8 to 9pm
A Heat Pump can drastically reduce your home's carbon emissions. This session will give guidance on determining if your home is suitable (most are!), an overview of the installation process, likely costs, carbon savings and common pitfalls.
Visit the Healthy Hub, which shares premises with the Community Skills Hub in Waltham Cross High Street, near the main entrance to Pavilions. The Healthy Hub is open from 9.30am to 5pm Mondays to Fridays.
Appointments can be by video chat, phone or in person
Chatter & Natter Tables
We are seeing more and more volunteer hosted Chatter & Natter tables pop up all over the UK. It's wonderful to see and hear stories about how all this chatting can make people feel so much better.
Have you ever considered becoming a Chatty Table Volunteer? A fab volunteer (Jon) is running a session on the 21st November at 1pm, to share his experience of volunteering in this role. To join, pleasebook a place here.
We recently spoke to the Goat Coffee Co. in Bracklesham Bay which has a Chatter & Natter table that is going from strength to strength.
Tractors and crops targeted in rural crime in Hertfordshire
Farmers have told the BBC that police rarely solve rural offences and are not doing enough to tackle organised crime. Suspects are almost 25% more likely to be charged for crimes in urban areas than in the countryside, BBC analysis of data has found. The Home Office says forces plan to tackle the "challenges" of rural crime.
Last year, Eveey Hunter's farm, in rural Hertfordshire, was devastated by a crime wave targeting machinery. One night in late summer, GPS components costing £20,000 each were cut out of all three of her tractors, halting work for three weeks.
Eveey says she's since learned, through her own detective work, that more than 30 other tractors also had the components removed on farms nearby as well as in East Anglia on the same night.
She believes organised crime groups are now targeting farmers and using ports to take the equipment abroad.
This winter 6 million people could be in fuel poverty, unable to afford to heat their homes
Cold homes are bad for people's physical and mental health, causing misery and social exclusion. It has been mild so far, but we know many people are already choosing between necessities like using energy or buying food. As the weather turns colder, things will get much worse.
Every day our CSE energy advisors support people in crisis. We tackle the root causes of fuel poverty – cold homes, low incomes and high energy bills – supporting thousands of households each year.
More people than ever before are calling our advice line in desperate need of support. We need your help. If you can, please help us share the warmth this winter.
Climate change: Is the UK on track to meet its targets?
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is attending the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, having previously said he would be staying in the UK to focus on "domestic challenges".
Mr Sunak said he wanted to "continue the leadership that our country has shown in tackling climate change".
The UK has pledged to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
Net zero means a country takes as much of these climate-changing gases out of the atmosphere as it puts in.
But the UK Committee on Climate Change (UKCCC), which advises the government, has criticised the UK's climate plans.
The Green Alliance asked homeowners what they need to make homes greener
Insulating the UK’s leaky homes has never been more urgent. The UK’s housing stock is one of the worst insulated of all advanced economies with 14 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions coming from heating and powering homes.
Installation rates for loft, cavity wall and solid wall insulation all need to grow by an order of magnitude by the middle of this decade. Installation rates for electric heat pumps need to reach one million a year in new and existing homes by 2030, up from around 54,000 in 2021.
(c) Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trust HMWT - "UK Government is seriously threatening our wildlife"
If you're as angry as we are about UK Government's plans to change nature and climate laws, help us to #DefendNature.
Nature has really taken a battering; in the last week alone, UK Government has announced that they will be:
Lifting the ban on fracking in England
Removing important laws that protect nature
Considering scrapping plans to reward farmers for managing land in a nature-friendly way.
These go against the explicit promises the Conservative Party made in their 2019 manifesto and the mandate they were elected to govern on. We have no option left to us but to ask our political leaders to represent us - their electorate.
Harry Bott's November Farming, Wildlife and Garden Reports
Harry is worried about Ash Die Back disease, ponders the increase in size and technology of tractors which come with eye watering prices and gives some tips on planting late French beans!
Read the full November report from Harry by clicking below.
Free Publicity for your Community or Charity Seasonal Event
Send us a short paragraph and a picture with a weblink and we will include it in our December eBulletin and we will also share it through our Social media.
Let us have it by Monday 5th December and we will publish on Friday 9th December
Look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks to our eBulletin Sponsors below
Click on the Poster for Lemon Booking
Click on the poster for the VillageGuard website
Click on the poster for the Norris & Fisher website
Help CDA Herts Mobile Hub Get On The Road
We need your support to raise enough funds to get our Mobile Hub on the road
enabling us & other partners to bring information and support to rural areas on
numerous helpful services.
Click Here to Support our Mobile Hub Project by buying
East Herts Lottery Tickets.
Join us on Facebook & Twitter and we can share your information, stories and events. We are also on Instagram so share your pictures with us too.
Click on the icon to follow us on Facebook where we share information from our partners, other organisations and charities all over Hertfordshire.
Click the icon to follow our Twitter feed. There is also a live feed on our website Homepage Click Here
CDA Herts Services available to communities in Hertfordshire
Community Garden St Albans - Plots available
Village Halls Advisory Service - part of the ACRE network
Rural Support Networks
Rural Issues Network
Rural Loneliness Forum
Digital Inclusion Project
Farmers' Cafes
Rural Affordable Housing Needs Assessments and Surveys
Community Led Housing
Village Connectors Project
HMP The Mount Play Area
Jobs Pathway
Covid Recovery Ethnic Diverse Project (CRED)
Reconnecting Hertford
Community Energy Network
Management Health Checks
Health & Safety Training, Audit and Risk Assessment
Health & Wellbeing advocacy
Send us your news, bulletin or newsletter and we will feature you.
email tim.hayward-smith@cdaherts.org.uk
Don't forget to click below to follow us on Facebook and Twitter
CDA Herts does not endorse nor recommend any services or products featured in the eBulletin and accepts no liability for any unforeseen circumstances arising. The views and opinions expressed in the content are those of the originators and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of CDA Herts.
