Rowhedge Village Hall Solar Panels, East Donyland Community Association, Colchester

This is a project to install solar panels on the roof of Rowhedge Village Hall together with a storage battery.

This will enable the hall to significantly reduce its energy bills, which in doing will allow keeping costs down for community groups using the hall, and encourage greater community use. It will also allow the organisation to use its limited income to improve and develop the hall for the benefit of the community and contribute to the “Green Agenda”.

The East Donyland Community Association was established as a registered charity in the late 1970s to fund raise and seek grant funding to build a much-needed village hall in Rowhedge.
This was achieved in stages and there is now a building comprising of a large sports hall with kitchen and gallery, a small multi-purpose hall with kitchen, a recently constructed annexe with child friendly toilets, and a small office. There are also a number of shared storage facilities, a manager’s office, toilets, and even the loft is regularly used as storage and workspace for Rowhedge Heritage Trust.

The main costs of the hall are energy, repairs and maintenance. By reducing expenditure on energy hire, costs for community groups will be kept to a minimum and also encourage the formation of new groups. Currently there are 20 different groups hiring the hall for various activities. These cater for all age groups, from toddlers to the elderly. This can improve people’s health and well-being and reduce isolation for many vulnerable people. Cost can be a barrier to involvement, and by keeping costs down the village hall continues to grow and thrive. In addition, reducing costs, will enable the Trustees to maintain the building, and also help fund and implement new additions e.g. accessible toilet and additional meeting room.