Category finalists

CATEGORY WINNER: Daneville Estate, Liverpool
In April 2008 Liverpool Mutual Homes took control of around 600 homes on the Daneville estate in the Walton area of Liverpool. Many of the properties were in a poor state of repair and around 60 had lain empty for a number of years. In its first year of operation, LMH has undertaken a £17 million programme to bring some 330 of the estate’s decaying homes back into a habitable state, while at the same time radically reducing the properties’ carbon emissions. In total LMH estimates that the improvements will cut down the estate’s overall carbon emissions by over 3,500 tonnes a year. And the increased efficiency will be reflected in customers’ energy bills, which LMH have calculated will fall on average by £534 a year.

Low Carbon Communities, West Midlands
Low Carbon Communities is one of only two schemes in the awards to be highly commended by judges. Developed by environmental social enterprise the Marches Energy Agency, the scheme set out to deliver measurable carbon reductions in communities through sustainable energy measures over a defined period of time. The scheme operates by supporting communities to cut carbon emissions in existing developments through changes behaviour and the use of appropriate low carbon technologies.

WhiteChapel TwentyFifty, Places for Places, Lancashire
Developer Places for People’s scheme involved local people in devising methods to reduce the carbon emissions from a group of existing homes by 80 per cent. Focusing on five homes in Whitehapel, Preston, the scheme set out to find ways of reducing domestic carbon emissions using methods that were deliberately low-tech and so could be easily replicable. It used simple systems such as ground source heat pumps to improve the energy ratings of all the homes involved in the project.