News from Transition Leominster

Transition Leominster is the local group working towards an equitable, sustainable and resilient Leominster.

Our cycling group will be out on Wednesday 18th – meet at 10am in Corn Square for a gentle trip to a café and back in time for lunch. Following the sad death of Alvin, Brian has taken over organising these outings.


Leominster Community Car Club
First core group meeting Wednesday, August 18th, 5.30pm, at Pete Blench’s house: Annadale, Caswell Terrace, Leominster HR6 8BB. Please respond.

Apologies for the short notice about this meeting but things are moving fast re the prospect of us getting a Council Grant to put our first shared-used car on the road. If you are interested and can attend the meeting, details below, please email me at peterblench47@gmail.com

We are now hopeful of a breakthrough re purchasing the first car and launching the club. Transition Leominster has had the ear of Herefordshire Council and has successfully encouraged the Council to embrace community car clubs as part of its sustainable transport strategy. We are hopeful of soon landing a grant of £12,000 for the purchase of a good second hand Yaris Hybrid car  – i.e. when the vehicle is running on petrol it also charges a battery to power an electric motor. This is the council’s favoured option for start-up clubs. The experienced Malvern Hills Car Club will purchase the cars, arrange insurance, manage the scheme and provide ‘back office’ support for ourselves and several other new clubs. There will be a simple online booking and billing system
Locally, we do need local volunteers for the following:

1 Car Manager, to oversee the care of the vehicle, take it for servicing when appropriate etc.

2 Membership Manager, to sign up members in their own homes and generally provide a link with the membership.

There will be scope for all members to play their part in the successful running of the club. I would be happy, for the time being, to continue to chair, do publicity and maintain the external links with the council and the wider scheme.
I am told by Malvern that things are, at last, moving at a pace. We now need a meeting to bring together a core group to get the club launched and, specifically, to fill the 2 key volunteer roles.
All 3 of the Green county councillors for Leominster have – as you would hope and expect – expressed their support for this initiative and will be joining the club. Two plan to get rid of their own aging private cars to rely instead on car club membership + public transport for their travel needs. This commitment is great but the club will have a problem re grants if it is perceived as being ‘led’ by councillors or their family members (I am in the latter category). We need others for the ‘public-facing’ roles and hope Transition supporters will consider stepping up at this crucial time so that we can benefit from a golden opportunity.   

Each shared vehicle in a car club – a community car pool – takes up to 12 private cars off the road and club members can slash motoring costs by up to half. To find out more about how car clubs work Click Here

Pete Blench


The Power for People team has been busy and the Community Energy Revolution is making serious headway. Read on for updates and an action request.
Campaign Updates

  • The Bill is back: two weeks ago, David Johnston MP reintroduced the Local Electricity Bill into Parliament as a Presentation Bill – just in the nick of time before the House of Commons rose for summer recess. This gives us an extra six weeks to build vital support.
  • The ‘Enabling Community Energy’ debate in Parliament was a great success, as 15 MPs from all major parties and all UK nations spoke in favour of the Bill. If you asked your MP to attend the debate – thank you. Watch highlights here.
  • Labour’s Shadow Energy Minister, Alan Whitehead MP, has now signed up to support the Bill. This is an exciting development because it means we effectively have the Labour Party on board.
  • Steve, our director, was invited onto BBC Radio 4’s Money Box recently to discuss the barriers faced by aspiring community energy suppliers. You can listen back to the show here (Steve joins around the 22:00 mark).

Invite others to take climate action
Now that the Bill is back in Parliament, we need many more people to sign up and take action to help the campaign. If we all recruit just one person, we can double our support and bring MPs on board at a much faster rate. This is where you come in…
Will you please take some of our solar postcards to recruit friends, family and fellow members of your organisation? Simply reply to this email with the following:

  1. Your full name and postal address
  2. How many postcards you would like

We will also include a pre-paid envelope so that you can return any completed postcards, which we will send on to the MPs that they are addressed to. Imagine a sack of postcards arriving at your door in the morning – you would definitely take notice. It would be extremely impactful for both supportive and not-yet-supportive MPs alike.
Alternatively, will you please share our online sign up page? Click here for link. 

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