Review of 2024: a personal perspective from our Executive Director

Looking back on 2024, it’s clear that the transition to a Net Zero Eastbourne is gathering pace. Eastbourne DGH, through its decarbonisation project which started in 2022, has now become the first renewable heated hospital in the UK after having replaced its steam heating system with a 4.8MWth multi-stage heat pump system, which provides renewable heat to the building. Coupled with the solar PV array over one of its car parks, and a major insulation retrofit to improve the thermal efficiency of the hospital, the DGH will now be reducing its carbon emission by 4,100 tonnes per annum, amount to a cumulative total of 24,600 tonnes by 2030, a significant contribution towards the town’s Carbon Neutral 2030 target.

Another step change in Eastbourne’s renewable energy transition will occur when the Suncoast Solar Farm is built within the next few years, after having been granted planning permission by Eastbourne Borough Council earlier this year. When completed, the solar farm will have a capacity of 20MW, equivalent to supplying the power needs of 6,400 homes. This is a big step up from the mere 5 or 6 MW of solar power capacity currently installed across the borough.  When local microgrids and regional energy pricing becomes a reality over the next decade or so, then the renewable power from the solar farm can be sold direct to local residents and businesses, reducing energy bills locally because solar power is so much cheaper than fossil fuels. There has understandably been much local concern about the need to protect the biodiversity of the site when the solar farm is built, and one of our members wrote a blog post about this issue, which can be adequately addressed if an appropriate biodiversity management plan is implemented, as many existing solar farms in the UK demonstrate.

But these large projects have to be supplemented by supporting individual households across the borough to gain access to renewable energy and energy efficiency installation schemes, as domestic properties account for more than 40% of the town’s overall carbon emissions. So Eastbourne Eco Action Network (EEAN) has this year continued to develop an ever stronger partnership with Energise Sussex Coast, an award-winning community energy cooperative. Together we have developed an Eastbourne Energy Champions network of trained volunteers able to give basic energy advice to local residents and signpost them to sources of expert help – such as Energise Sussex Coast provides – if they are in fuel poverty or need to make their homes warmer. A second round of Energy Champions training began in Eastbourne a couple of weeks ago and will continue in 2025, so if you wish to receive free training to become an Energy Champion volunteer, please let us know. The more, the merrier!

Another big source of carbon emissions in Eastbourne is the transport sector, which is not surprising given the high degree of dependence of the town on cars for moving around, coupled with the lack of Active Travel infrastructure such as safe cycle lanes. To raise awareness about the need to make local cycling safer, especially for kids going to school, the 4th Eastbourne Kidical Mass Bike Ride took place in May, which many EEAN members joined in with. The lack of bus lanes also restricts the quality and reliability of the local bus service, but progress toward rectifying this was achieved this year when East Sussex County Council approved plans to put bus lanes in Seaside, a key arterial road in town notorious for its traffic congestion. Many EEAN members engaged extensively with the consultation process in order to support the introduction of the bus lanes.

But further improvements are needed to local bus services to make travelling by bus a much better alternative to driving for local residents, which is why this year EEAN set up an Eastbourne Bus User Group, bringing together local stakeholders to collaborate on making these improvements. To encourage people to think about driving less, EEAN’s EcoTransport Group once again organised a Car Free Day in Eastbourne, in Hyde Gardens. EEAN also held a very productive workshop in February about the latest Local Transport Plan (LPT4) prepared by East Sussex County Council.

For a fuller picture of all that is being done in Eastbourne to make the town more sustainable and carbon free, please look at our One Planet Eastbourne community ecosystem digital platform, which is hosting plans made by some local businesses, including those who get free support from EEAN to help devise such plans. Some local businesses do show great climate leadership through their efforts to become more eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable, and Richard Garland gave a keynote speech at our Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 Symposium earlier this year to explain how his business is progressing on its sustainability journey.

Given that the impacts of climate change are arriving thick and fast now, the need for climate adaptation is becoming ever more urgent. Part of such adaptation is figuring out how local food growing can be better protected  from climate impacts such as increased flooding incidents, increased frequency and severity of droughts and heatwaves, and so on. EEAN has partnered up with Eastbourne Food Partnership and Blue Heart to investigate how local food growers are coping with such impacts and what strategies, if any, they are using to better adapt to those impacts. Part of that investigation involved visiting local groups involved in community food growing, such as Gather Community Garden, Pevensey Bay allotments, Pevensey & Westham Community Forest Garden, and Langney Community Centre. A presentation on EEAN’s research on local food growing and climate change was made at the recent Eastbourne Food Summit.

Other highlights this year was exhibiting at the Spring Water Festival Eco Fair, wonderfully organised by Plastic Free Eastbourne, and engaging with the pop-up Climate Hubs in the Beacon shopping centre in collaboration with volunteers from the Eastbourne Climate Coalition. We’ve also engaged with the hard-working volunteers of the Eastbourne United Nations Association, who have a fantastically effective carbon sequestration programme that is supported by many residents and organisations in the borough, as well as by Eastbourne Borough Council. It’s also worth a shout-out to the magnificent volunteers of Treebourne, an organisation EEAN helped to develop in its early days. Treebourne has planted many thousands of new trees across the town, which will not only help wildlife but also create vital shade to help significantly cool the streets and public spaces when the inevitable intense heatwaves arrive.

Eastbourne Borough Council continues to reduce its own carbon emissions, and the latest yearly update to its Climate Change Strategy is now available online. An independent assessment of the progress the council is making with its Climate Change Strategy, compared with all other comparable local councils, is available from Climate Emergency UK, which has a detailed scorecard for Eastbourne. EEAN continues to collaborate with the council on ways to develop and improve its climate strategy; to assist this collaboration, all the directors of  EEAN have received the Certificate in Carbon Literacy from the Carbon Literacy Project after receiving training organised by Community Energy South.

EEAN also engages in the community consultation process  that the Environment Agency organises regarding its Pevensey Bay to Eastbourne Coastal Management Scheme, which this year published its plans for protecting the local area from flooding for the period 2027 to 2037. The success of this scheme is vital if Eastbourne – a low-lying coastal community very much in the front line of climate change – is to have any kind of viable, sustainable future in the long-term.

But while we still have our present coastline to enjoy, another EEAN project this year was to design an upgrade to the East Sussex Coastal Culture Trail, a key tourist route that connects up some of Eastbourne’s cultural assets with other cultural assets all the way to Hastings. The upgrade is necessary due to the current lack of safe connectivity between destinations along the trail, especially for walkers and cyclists. Bringing together the many stakeholders who need to collaborate on such an upgrade was a key part of the project. To facilitate that, EEAN and Bespoke Cycle Group organised a Summer Cycle Ride for them so that they could see for themselves exactly where the upgrade is needed. With Active Travel improvements to the trail, the local tourist economy would benefit from increased visitor numbers, coupled with an increased uptake in cycling, facilitating a modal shift away from car driving along the coast.

To conclude, I wish to express my heartfelt appreciation and thanks for the tremendous work of so many volunteers to help drive forward climate action locally, action which helps make the town better for all through co-benefits such as cleaner air, safer streets, greener public spaces, etc. We all deserve a rest over the festive period! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all!

This Annual Review was prepared by EEAN’s Executive Director, Andrew Durling, who also prepared the Annual reviews for 2022 and 2023.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review of 2022: a personal perspective from our Executive Director

The Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC that I’m proud to be part of is a tiny social enterprise entirely run by volunteers and receiving very little funding, yet it continued to punch way above its weight throughout 2022 by continuing its mission to facilitate cross-community efforts to deliver a carbon neutral Eastbourne by 2030. How did it do this? Let’s see…

We participated actively in the development of the Eastbourne Climate Coalition, a new grouping of over 40 local organisations formed in the wake of the COP26 climate talks. The coalition agreed to pursue the goal of creating a Climate Emergency Centre in central Eastbourne in order to maximise engagement with local people about the key environmental issues of our time and showcase the opportunities to become involved in positive ways with those issues. We organised and managed, on behalf of the Eastbourne Climate Coalition,  a crowdfunding campaign for the Eastbourne Climate Hub project that successfully raised over £5,000 to help fund it.

We provided crucial back-office support for two pop-up Climate Emergency Centres this year, in collaboration with our partners in the Eastbourne Climate Coalition. The first was an E-Hive marquee at the inaugural E-Festival in Princes Park in July, which provided a rich and varied programme of community-run events that engaged festival-goers with a wide range of issues concerning the climate and nature emergencies.

The second was an E-Hive hub in The Beacon shopping centre that was open 7 days a week for 6 weeks, from November 1st to December 13th.

Both E-Hives were a great success, buzzing with activities about all things eco, and all entirely run by local volunteers on a skeleton budget. The learnings gained from these two pop-ups will help planning for whatever permanent premises are eventually acquired, hopefully in 2023.

Logo with orange and yellow circle and the words, Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030. Sustainable Business and Solar Summit 2022

Our team put in hundreds of hours of work organising the Sustainable Business & Solar Summit at the Welcome Building in November, bringing together probably the largest gathering of local experts, installers, and funders in renewable energy and sustainability ever seen in Eastbourne. We worked in partnership with Eastbourne Borough Council and the Eastbourne Chamber of Commerce, plus some key local sponsors, to ensure that the summit was indeed a great success, opening up opportunities for a scaling up of the green tech sector in Eastbourne, crucial to reducing carbon emissions within Eastbourne as well as creating new green, well-paid jobs in the local economy and saving local businesses a lot of money on their energy bills. The collection of videos and slideshows of the great presentations made at this event are well worth watching.

We formed a partnership with Energise Sussex Coast, a local community energy enterprise, to facilitate the scaling up of energy advice to Eastbourne residents in 2023. Now more than ever people need help to find out how to reduce the size of their energy bills and how to keep their homes warm enough in winter. But every household’s circumstances are unique and there’s no better way to deliver energy advice than through in-person conversations in local settings with local energy advisors who have been trained up by fully qualified energy experts. We will be working with local organisations to help recruit volunteers willing to be trained up as energy advisors, and the training will begin next February.

 

We also provided assistance to the Eastbourne Food Partnership (which to a large extent grew out of our original Food Working Group)  to help secure significant grant funding to employ a paid coordinator to scale up the work of the food partnership, now a fully independent social enterprise in its own right. This partnership is, amongst its other aims, about creating a coherent local food system that is climate-resilient and ensures a sustainable and accessible supply of fresh, healthy food to all local residents, food moreover that is grown locally as much as possible and grown in ways that promote soil health & local biodiversity rather than damage it, thereby reducing carbon emissions from inappropriate land use.

Our two working groups, the Housing & Energy, and the EcoTransport Group, have continued to be very active with their own initiatives, feeding informed comments into various council consultations and liaising with local councillors about how to reduce local carbon emissions in a variety of local sectors and projects. In a time when all local councils have such financial constraints that keeping up with all the many eco issues is now difficult for them, the input of well-informed and dedicated local volunteers into council initiatives on carbon neutrality is crucial and much appreciated by most councillors.

 

The good news is that, overall, carbon emissions are falling in Eastbourne year by year, but the bad news is that the fall is not yet fast enough to meet the 2030 target of meaningful carbon neutrality. We will be working hard in 2030 to help speed up that fall, especially as we have no time to lose now that the impacts of climate change are becoming ever more apparent even in the UK, which experienced its hottest ever summer in 2022. I would like to thank all those who volunteered their time and energy in all the projects we have been part of, and all those groups who have partnered with us. There has been nothing more rewarding for me than working with so many people dedicated to making Eastbourne a cleaner, healthier, greener place that contributes its fair share towards ensuring a safe enough climate future for our families and for all future generations.

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Andrew Durling, Executive Director, Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC

The Eastbourne ECO Action Network in 2021: What was our year like?

As 2021 draws to a close, now is a good time to review the progress of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network.

As 2021 draws to a close, now is a good time to review the progress of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network, which has been very active throughout the year despite all the disruptions caused by the pandemic. Here’s a selection of the highlights as I, Andrew Durling, see them from my perspective as CEO of the Eastbourne Eco Action CIC.

Housing, Energy & Environment

The 2021 Eastbourne Eco Homes webinar was designed and hosted by the Housing and Energy Working Group. Their extensive research helped local residents make their homes much more energy-efficient. 

The Housing & Energy, Research and Transport Groups drafted three Technical Advice Notices (TANs), which were adopted by Eastbourne Borough Council. These rules form a crucial part of the planning guidance for ensuring that developments within Eastbourne are as environmentally sound as possible within current planning law. The TANs cover EV infrastructure, Sustainability in Development, and Biodiversity Net Gain. The Housing & Energy Group have scrutinised the EBC development proposals for the Old Magistrate Court site in Old Orchard Road, and are lobbying for these TANs to be fully incorporated into design schemes. Additionally, the group is actively working with Eastbourne Borough Council and the ECO Action Transport Group to create Low Traffic Neighbourhoods within the town.

The Research Group’s upstream liaison with Eastbourne Borough Council over the Environment Agency’s Pevensey Bay to Eastbourne Coastal Defences Scheme has been a success. Members of the group also collaborate with Ralph Lucas, an Eastbourne resident who is a member of the House of Lords, over biodiversity net gain standards in the Environment Bill and the ecological impacts of Queen’s Green Canopy Project. 

We liaised with councillors and council officers about the development of the Pevensey Bay to Eastbourne Coastal Management Scheme. The Environment Agency has designed the scheme to strengthen the local sea defences so they can cope with the predicted rise in sea levels that climate change will induce by 2100. Without improved sea defences, Eastbourne will become increasingly vulnerable to severe flooding from storm surges.

Sustainability in 2021

The Eastbourne Food Partnership (EFP), some members of which emerged from the EEAN’s Food Working Group and Climate Adaptation Group, became a Community Interest Company in 2021. The change enabled the group to successfully gain its first grant funding to facilitate the development of a sustainable, climate-resilient local food network that can ensure a supply of fresh, healthy, locally produced food distributed equitably to all local residents. 

Furthermore, the EFP is now a member of the national Sustainable Food Places network, and works in close collaboration with 3VA and East Sussex County Council. It has recently been liaising with councillors and council officers about how the Eastbourne Food Partnership, and the EEAN in general, could have some sort of presence within the Food Street project developing in Victoria Place.

Moreover, EEAN wrote vital proposals for ensuring that the Eastbourne Levelling Up Fund (LUF) remains within the purview of the Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 strategy. The Transport Group and CIC submitted a proposal for the delivery of bus priority lanes, to unlock investment in zero carbon buses to reduce pollution supporting modal shift from cars to buses. Given that the LUF aims to increase the number of visitors to Eastbourne by 500,000 per year, a Transport Plan has to be at the heart of the LUF to prevent transport emissions within the town from increasing, and the Transport Working Group has been instrumental in designing that plan throughout 2021.

We have supported the continuing success of Treebourne (which evolved from the Carbon Capture Working Group) and EcoEd2030 (which evolved from the Education Working Group) through administrative support such as draft policy templates, advice on CIC forms, banking services for Treebourne; and an offer of financial grant to help with set up costs. Two CIC directors along with colleagues planted and cared for hundreds of baby trees in the Churchdale Allotment, some 400 of which have been transferred for planting at Tugwell Park.

Social Media & Public Profile in 2021

We have extended our active social media presence with the help of the one paid employee in the EEAN CIC gained under the government’s Kickstart programme. We created a fresh newsletter format using that presence to complete, and publicise, for the first time ever, a detailed survey – prepared by the Kickstart employee with aid from the Transport Working Group – of local people’s opinions about the local bus service, and how it could be improved. This has given a voice to bus users within our community, and we continue to lobby on their behalf. 

Some of the results have been used by East Sussex County Council in compiling its own analysis of local bus services and how to improve them.  This has helped increase our newsletter subscriptions by 47%. This bus survey reached over 12,000 local citizens. Our recent social media posts of Andy Durling’s speech at the COP26 rally in September reached over 6,800 people via organic growth across our social media channels. 

On wider communication, the CIC and other network groups contribute to the Eastbourne Borough Council ECN2030 Newsletter sent to over 10,000 residents; and the CIC and Groups have had articles published in the Eastbourne Herald, stimulating further engagement from the community.

As members of the Eastbourne Cultural Strategy Group and following on from our collaboration with them to facilitate the “Full Frontal” artworks on the empty Debenhams store, we have introduced this group to the possibility of using cultural engagement on the theme of climate change awareness and responses modelled on the excellent work of Creative Carbon Scotland.

We were delighted to work with a local artist and Eastbourne BID in the creation of the ‘You are part of history mural’ located at the junction of York and Grove Road in Eastbourne.

We participated in the march and rally organised by the Eastbourne Climate Coalition on 6 November to coincide with the start of the UN COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow. I delivered a speech to the rally on behalf of the EEAN, which was later published as a blog on the website. This address had an organic reach in social media of over 6,800, thanks to our Kickstart employee. The EEAN CIC is now collaborating with the Eastbourne Climate Coalition to set up a Climate Hub in Eastbourne.

Eastbourne residents participate in a protest march to recognise COP26

Thank you!

On behalf of all my colleagues in the EEAN CIC, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks and deep gratitude to all the CIC directors, groups and partner organisations within the EEAN for their hard work in the face of the incredible difficulties we’ve all had to deal with in this pandemic year. You are heroes all! I hope you have a very restful and peaceful Christmas and New Year and come back refreshed in 2022 to continue the great work of helping to deal with the greatest challenge of our time: the Climate Emergency.

On a more personal note, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude and thanks to Miles Berkley, my predecessor as CEO of the EEAN CIC, for his immense contributions to the EEAN and to ecological action generally during his two years in office. His dedication to developing effective collaboration between all partners within the Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 campaign was exceptional and will have a lasting and deep impact.

Happy holidays!

Andrew Durling

Executive Director