Affordable GreenGauge Homes win their first award

The GreenGauge Homes project in Lingwood, Norfolk, was honoured at the CPRE Norfolk Awards last week.

This scheme of 15 eco-friendly affordable homes designed by Barefoot & Gilles incorporates the latest construction and energy technologies to provide housing at just 5% above the price of Housing Corporation standard homes and offer significant savings in running costs for tenants. The homes are being monitored by the University of East Anglia.

Martin Aust, business growth director at Flagship Housing Group said, "Flagship is committed to environmental sustainability, reducing the carbon 'footprint' new homes leave on our environment. This project is utilising different types of renewable energy technologies which makes this an exciting project to monitor."

Roger Gilles of Architects Barefoot & Gilles said,
'We have designed these homes to be like a home any of us would be familiar with, but with the benefits of the latest technologies. The houses are energy efficient, cheap to run and, I hope, a pleasure to live in.'

Special guest Bill Bryson, president of the CPRE, paid tribute to the quality of the projects awarded, adding: "As a lover of the Norfolk countryside I am enthralled by the range of projects in my home county that have contributed so much. They highlight the efforts of hundreds of people - those working on a professional basis and those that treasure unspoilt countryside around them."

The Lingwood scheme has already become a community and this impressed the CPRE Judges. There are other schemes in the pipline; GreenGauge homes are also being planned in the Norfolk village of Horstead.

The National Housing Federation in partnership with CPRE released figures this year exposing the scale of the rural housing crisis. Over the last five years, the number of people waiting for an affordable home in country areas has soared by 37%, up from 507,757 in 2003 to 695,735 last year.

About Greengauge Homes
GreenGauge is a cost-effective approach to building sustainable, affordable housing that can improve on government guidance on energy efficiency and still be built within the Housing Corporation's Standard Grant Funding Structure. This scheme of 15 timber framed GreenGauge Homes in Lingwood, Norfolk is the first to be completed.

Affordable housing needs to be reproduceable, to prioritise low running costs, and promote practical, sustainable energy use to tenants. So rather than reinvent the wheel, the GreenGauge Partnership has developed a system of tried and tested energy saving and generation technologies to suit a variety of locations and layouts.

The University of East Anglia is monitoring the thermal performance of the technologies in use at Lingwood, which include sun space and heat recovery, ground source heat pumps, solar collectors and PVs and a 'control' group of superinsulated gas centrally heated houses. Each home is has a user interface to illustrate the energy savings.

The GreenGauge Partners are:

Flagship Housing Group
Barefoot & Gilles
Broadland District Council
Lingwood Parish Council
Oxbury & Company
University of East Anglia
Victory Housing Trust and
Youngs Homes

Stuart White of BBC Look East planting a tree at Lingwood. Photograph Natasha Lyster 01508 522002