About this group
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We urgently need more votes for our NatWest CommunityForce grants - see Updates/Comments/Emails
The Beccles Lido Group came together in 2006, first as the Friends of Beccles Open Air Swimming Pool and then as Beccles Lido Limited (BLL). The Friends and BLL are community groups comprising volunteers from Beccles, a market town in Suffolk.
After a long campaign to save it from being closed by Waveney District Council, the Council closed the pool in 2008.
BLL raised £300,000 to acquire the pool; repair it, installing various innovative “Green” energy saving and energy generating measures; and re-opened it in 2010.
We have just closed at the end of our first full season and the new Beccles Lido has been an unqualified success – both in terms of its use (over 26,000 swimmers compared with 8,231 in 2008) and the reduction in running costs thanks to the energy saving and generating measures installed.
But this was very much phase 1 and we would now like to install further energy saving and generating measures as outlined in our application to Energyshare, to further lower our carbon footprint and reduce our running costs, making us a truly sustainable enterprise.
Measures planned:
> A new Solar PV installation to take us up to 10kW (the optimum for FITS)
> Our first Solar Thermal installation, to heat our showers
> A pilot Air Source Heating system, to supplement the energy efficient gas boilers that heat the pool
> Various other energy saving measures
For all the latest news, blogs, tweet and videos:
Inspired by our success at the Lido, our vision is to be extended as BLL takes over the Public Hall in Beccles, another much loved community asset that is used for a mixture of meetings, theatrical productions, art exhibitions and shows.
Significant investment is needed to reverse years of neglect and Waveney District Council decided that they cannot make this investment. So unless an alternative body stepped forward to acquire and run the Public Hall it would have been sold, most probably for property development.
We are raising the funds needed for repairs and improvements, and with more entrepreneurial management and community involvement the Public Hall can become a modern facility of which Beccles can be proud.
The Beccles Lido Group’s vision is for the Public Hall to become a vibrant meeting place and entertainment venue that local people, visitors and tourists will want to use and visit regularly and in the numbers required to make it a thriving local enterprise.
In just 3 months we raised nearly £20,000 and our application to Energyshare will allow us to implement energy saving and generating measures which will begin to establish the hall as an efficient and sustainable building.
Measures planned:
> Renewable technology to generate electricity/heat
> Various other energy saving measures, including insulation of the loft and a more efficient zonal heating system
For all the latest news:
www.facebook.com/groups/becclespublichall
We hope that you will be inspired by BLL taking on this second community asset and vote to support our Energyshare grant application and help make the Lido and the Public Hall sustainable community assets.
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