I moved into the area not far from Penpont recently after retiring and wanted to see what volunteering opportunities there were locally. I met with key representatives of the KPT DT and couldn’t quite believe the extent of some of the Trust’s achievements; the Active Travel Path, Community Hydro, Community Cafe and Community Gardens. All very impressive to me. I was then told about the Community Housing project which had just reached the end of the feasibility study stage. Although what I had in mind was maybe helping to build a pizza oven in the Community Garden I was asked to become a Trustee and build nine houses! I’ve always liked something that I can get my teeth into, alas it wasn’t to be pizza but I did agree to their request and began leading the project.
My initial finding was that there was too great a gap between the build costs of the project as it stood and the funding that we could identify so suggested that we should consider using ‘factory made’ housing units to reduce costs yet maintain the quality of the homes. This approach also saved money by reducing onsite building costs and risks to overspend. The factory-based manufacture approach is promoted by the Scottish Government as the benefits are well recognised.
The KPT DT enjoys the services of consultants ‘South of Scotland Community Housing (SoSCH)’ and they helped the Trust establish a relationship with funders, the ‘South of Scotland Enterprise’ and an Offsite Construction company called Iron & Pine based in Dalbeattie. We all worked together to re-design the whole project using single storey structures based around ‘nearly-new’ shipping containers resulting in a very modern, visually low impact solution. We also pushed the houses back into the build plot and introduced other aspects to the development, namely a community garden and allotments. We think that this approach is less intrusive than taller buildings along the roadside at the entrance to the village. We also embraced the use of solar panels and battery storage which has a achieved ‘zero-energy-cost’ homes. This means that throughout the course of a year, each home will generate all the energy needed to supply heating, lighting and all other internal energy usage, a real benefit to future tenants. We managed to reduce the overall project costs whilst adding further elements beyond housing to form an inclusive asset for the whole community.
Our potential building plot also has the Active Travel Path running around its edge which we will integrate with. We are currently at the stage of waiting to hear whether we’ve been successful in acquiring the funding needed to cover the building plot costs.
It’s been such an interesting year, my career was in engineering in the private sector and small business, all very different to the public sector and third sector. It’s been a huge learning curve for me to work in this area and it’s certainly had its challenges. It does feel like our communities are expected to be increasingly self sufficient, yet the funding that is needed for us to undertake such responsibilities is hard to come by and has complex processes and formalities. I think this is where we could do with more help enabling small development trusts like ours to navigate these challenges. We do benefit hugely though from organisations such as SoSCH and Development Trust Association Scotland (DTAS) thankfully.
My reasons for wanting to volunteer would be familiar I guess, wanting to put my spare time, knowledge and experience to good use helping others. Moving into the area also meant I wanted to learn more about the community and meet new people. This has been really successful, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some amazing people within our own Trust and beyond and have often been humbled by the relentless commitment by others to give and achieve so much. Our project is about creating a significant number of new homes for local families to rent, helping to keep the community healthy and thriving. It has been an incredibly rewarding year for me, playing my part in this journey. There is lots to do and if we get our funding the project will soon get even more exciting, we are looking for new volunteers, if you like pizza, please get in touch!
Dean Foster – KPT Development Trust