Local leaders

Time-travelling rural affairs reporter James Goodman finds all the ingredients of success in a go-ahead village - ten years into the future.

Little Greenham might not look like much. It’s not the prettiest of places, with a main road running right through the middle. But it has just beaten national competition to win the €50,000 first prize in the 2016 Calor Village of the Year Award.

Sense of identity

Contrary to popular misconceptions, the competition is looking for more than thatched cottages and tidy rose beds. “We’re interested in communities that have worked together to overcome the challenges of rural life,” says judge Jeremy Taggart. “Villages where people feel they belong, where there is a sense of direction.”

And Little Greenham (population 2,500, up from 1,900 just ten years ago) does have a vision. “It’s written down,” says resident Thom Lazzier, “saying where we want to be in 20 years’ time. Practically everyone was involved in one way or another in putting it together.” You can see it on the interactive touch-screen notice board next to the bus stop, as well as online. “So much has come out of that vision,” says Lazzier. “That’s where the wind farm came from, as well as the solar panels on the village hall.”

Toad Show

In their report, the judges drew special attention to Little Greenham’s Toad Show, a festival that started out as a sausage-making competition (‘toad’ is a local name for sausages). The festival died out in the mid-twentieth century, but the parish council revived it in 2012, and now it’s a thriving three-day event; 20,000 people came last year. “Of course it’s about much more than sausages,” says organiser Amy Birtwhistle. “There’s a funfair, music and a great deal of lovely, locally produced food.”

It was the Toad Show that helped kick-start some of Little Greenham’s local food production. A five-acre field, put aside by a local arable farmer, now provides vegetables for the show and for the neighbourhood. Villagers pay an annual subscription, and can take an unlimited amount of produce for their own consumption; 30 families are now self-sufficient in potatoes, carrots, cauliflowers and onions. 

Local opportunities

Butcher Liz Burley, who produces Little Greenham’s sausages, has been helped along the way by an innovative project to support small businesses, called the Little Greenham Share Scheme. When a new company starts up, shares are sold to villagers and non-villagers alike, who then receive dividends - not in money but, in the case of Burley’s Butchers, in sausages. Burley’s meat supplier, pig farmer John Donald, says the scheme helped him too. “A few years ago I was in serious debt,” he says, “and on the verge of either losing my farm, or taking European funds to grow biofuels. I wanted to stay growing food on my farm. Because of the festival, the share scheme and Burley’s sausages, I could.”

Jenny Martin also used the scheme to set up her energy microgeneration consultancy, advising on how homes and small businesses can reduce their energy use. Her shareholders receive discounted advice on their energy use and have first refusal on buying cheap, locally produced energy. 

Changing faces

Little Greenham’s proximity to the fast-growing Big City has given rise to some of its greatest challenges. Ever since it was earmarked in the regional spatial plan as a ‘growth village’, building work has been virtually non-stop.

Instead of opposing development, the community decided to welcome the new homes as an opportunity. Councillor Pam Isleworth, 39, says: “We just knuckled down and made the best of it. Little Greenham won’t be so little any more, but we have no regrets.”

The community runs regular ‘new faces’ evenings at the village hall, and every new arrival receives a welcome pack - not just stuffed through the letterbox but delivered by hand by a neighbour. The pack includes a Little Greenham smart card, used for discounts with buses and taxis, to register CO2 emissions, and to log the amount of food being bought from local sources.

Real efforts are made to include everyone in decisions that affect the village, with regular opinion polls on local matters. And, as competition judge Jeremy Taggart says, “there’s a combined oldies club and crèche at the hall to make sure that everyone can participate in village social life. It’s incredibly important that people are included, whatever their age or background.” 

Going places

Many of the new Little Greenhammers work in Big City, but commuter car journeys cause less of a problem for the village CO2 emissions thanks to the electric car pool. It’s managed online, and has helped cut car ownership by half in a decade - from 1.4 per household in 2006 to 0.7 per household today, much lower than the average for rural areas.

For non-drivers, there is a small electric taxi service run by volunteers, taking pensioners and the village youth to Nearby Town and back, free of charge. And then there’s always the combined train station and telecentre, eight miles away by bus.

Jerzy Dobavic, 38, manager of the Greenham District Railway Centre, says: “We had to guarantee that people would use the station, and to be honest we weren’t confident we could do so. That’s why we combined it with a telecentre, drop-in office and meeting place. Most weekdays we’re full. A handful of small businesses are based here and many others come just to use our videoconferencing kit - they love it.”

This approach to local transport has been copied by other villages in the area and further afield, whether there’s a train station nearby or not. Telecentres work at bus stations just as well.

Fit for the future

“Progressive villages,” says Isleworth, “should be showing the way to the nation on climate change. We can be completely self-sufficient in energy, for instance by using waste from agriculture. We wanted to set an example.” Every year the villagers conduct a survey, helped with information from the village smart cards and the Little Greenham II website, to estimate CO2 emissions per person. The survey includes all local businesses and takes into account travel and shopping as well as heat and power. In 2011 the village won an award for going carbon neutral. Now it has gone one better and actually sells electricity back to the national grid.

The 2016 Calor Village of the Year is far from precious about its success. Visits from villages across the county and further afield are common; Little Greenham is spreading the message. And to cap it all, Isleworth announced today that Little Greenham II,  the virtual counterpart to the real village, is now twinned with Harapur II, a similar virtual village in rural Northern India. As Thom Lazzier says, cradling a pint of beer outside the Toad and Turbine: “I wasn’t sure at first about entering the Calor Village of the Year award, whether the effort would be worth it, but it’s done us the world of good. It’s helped bring us together, and realise what we’ve got.” Which, all in all, is quite a lot.

James Goodman is head of futures at Forum for the Future. To read the Calor/Forum for the Future report, 'Calor Village of the Year Award - towards 2016', click here.

12 January 2007