Do you have the time, energy, motivation and a spare room to be able to support a vulnerable adult in your home?
ategi are looking for people of all ages and backgrounds to become Shared Lives Carers. Earn up to £324 per week per person you support. An understanding of supporting vulnerable adults with dementia, learning disabilities, mental health or physical or sensory disabilities desirable but not essential.
ategi provide full training, ongoing support and good rates of pay when you are matched with someone who suits your circumstances & lives or stays with you.
For further information or an application pack please contact us by calling or sending us an email: 01494 568 888 or adminbucks@ategi.co.uk
www.ategi.org.uk ’supporting people to live their lives’
Heating Oil: Summer Top 10 Tips
These ten top tips come from CCB's national body ACRE (Action with Communities in Rural England), and are designed to help people who heat their homes with oil. The tips include advice on looking after your oil tank, guarding against theft, dealing with suppliers and joining an oil buying club. See www.acre.org.uk for full details.
1. Check your stock of oil - have you got any room for a summer top-up? However, do not fill your fuel tank completely full during hot weather. Fuel must have room to expand.
2. Consider your future oil requirements now, and look to buy as much as possible during the summer months when prices are nearly always lower than in winter.
3. If you want to check that you are dealing with a bona fide distributor who adheres to the FPS Code of Practice, then email or ring the FPS (Federation of Petroleum Suppliers) or use the ‘Find Your Local Distributor’ facility on the FPS website, www.oilsave.org.uk, where you will also find advice about ordering oil and switching supplier.
4. Consider joining a local oil-buying group. Buying together makes for more efficient oil deliveries and therefore lower prices. To find your nearest local oil buying group and for more information on oil clubs, see www.acre.org.uk or www.citizensadvice.org.uk.
5. If you have difficulty in paying for your whole order in advance, look into cost-effective ways to help you to do this. Your local credit union may be able to help, and some oil buying schemes have a Pay-As-You-Go option.
6. If you are struggling to pay for fuel, check that you are receiving all the help that you are entitled to. Your local Citizens’ Advice centre can help you with this.
7. Check that your oil tank is as secure as possible against oil theft. Measures you can take include installing a tank lock, an alarm that goes off if fuel drains away quickly, CCTV and security lights. Further advice is available on www.oilsave.org.uk
8. Make sure that your insurance policy covers your oil tank – most home insurance policies do not include this in the standard cover. You need to be covered for loss of fuel through theft and oil spills, and the environmental clean-up of your property and any adjacent land in the event of a leak.
9. Inspect your tank regularly and have it serviced annually by a qualified oil-fired heating engineer. For more information see www.oftec.org.uk.
10. A key way to reduce your heating bills is to make sure that your home is highly energy efficient. A Green Deal Assessment will identify the best steps to take, such as replacing your boiler or installing loft or wall insulation. Green Deal financing is also available to help cover the costs of the improvements. To find a list of assessors see www.gdorb.decc.gov.uk.
Vodafone Rural Open Sure Signal Programme
The Vodafone Rural Open Sure Programme will give up to 100 rural communities across the UK, with little or no mobile coverage, the opportunity to apply to have Vodafone 3G mobile coverage in their area.
Vodafone’s initial Rural Open Sure Signal trial, which started in 2012, has seen the connection of 12 rural communities across the UK, from Walls in the Shetland Islands to Newton St Cyres in Devon. The communities connected so far have been enjoying our mobile coverage to stay in touch with friends and families, whilst businesses - from GPs to a mussel farmer - now have mobile coverage to help make their businesses work better. Due to the success of the trial, for both consumers and small enterprises, we’ve decided to extend the programme to 100 further rural communities across the UK.
What is the Rural Open Sure Signal programme?
In rural and remote locations across the UK, the economic case for traditional networks can be challenging. This may be due to the geography of the area or difficulties with siting masts in places such as national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty.
Vodafone Rural Open Sure Signal programme uses ‘femtocell’ technology to provide a Vodafone 3G signal in areas where traditional mobile coverage has been unable to reach.
About the size of a domestic broadband box and in a range of colours (white/grey/brown), the units use existing broadband services to deliver the mobile signal needed to provide 3G coverage, where before there was little or none. The units can be installed on any number of buildings including village halls, pubs, shops and homes across the community to ensure widespread mobile coverage.
What do the communities need to do?
We are encouraging communities to nominate a Village Champion to lead the application process and ensure that the community has a number of things in place before submitting their application form. These include ensuring the community has at least a 4MB broadband connection, which is essential as Rural Open Sure Signal units work from a broadband connection, to identifying 5-10 properties across the community, often on buildings on a hill or in a ‘community hub’, on which to site our boxes. Application forms and full information on the programme can be found on our dedicated webpages at www.vodafone.co.uk/rural.
What’s next?
Once the Village Champions have completed the applications we have ask them to send them to us as soon as they can before the application closure date of 14 October 2014 so that we can announce the successful communities in the autumn.
For more information on the Rural Open Sure Signal programme visit www.vodafone.co.uk/rural
Final Round of ESF Community Grants Programme
£203,512 STILL AVAILABLE!
Are you a charity community group or a not-for-profit organisation?
Do you support disadvantaged people over the age of 19 to access further learning opportunities or progress to employment?
Did you have an income of less than £300,000 in the last financial year and employ no more than the equivalent of 9 full-time staff?
Do you work with people living in the Thames Valley – Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Milton Keynes and Slough?
If so, you could apply for a grant of up to £15,000 to fund a project working with at least one of these priority groups:
• lone parents
• women
• people with health/disability issues
• older people (50 yrs plus)
• people from ethnic minorities and diverse communities
The aim of the project must be to assist unemployed or economically inactive people into employment or further education. The type of activities which can be funded include:
• Initial help with basic skills.
• Taster work experience including voluntary work.
• Training advice and guidance.
• Job search assistance.
• Confidence building and personal development.
• Supporting individuals to overcome barriers to learning and/or employment
The deadline for this final round is 12 noon on the 1st September. Applications must be sent by post or delivered in person to OCVA, The Old Court House, Floyds Row, St Aldate’s, Oxford OX1 1SS
For an application form and guidelines, please go to http://www.ocva.org.uk/news/european-social-fund-community-grants-programme
Community Summer 2014
The summer edition of CCB's Community magazine is available from the Resources pages on the CCB website. Alternatively click here to download your copy.
This edition includes information on:
- Rural housing and neighbourhood planning
- CCB Oil Club
- Berkshire Association of Local Councils
- Village hall renovation projects
- Fuel Poverty
- Community-led planning
Community Homes: Models for Development
On Tuesday 23rd September 2014 CCB is running a free one-day event for West Berkshire parish councillors, local authority members and local landowners on the different approaches that can be taken to get the housing that is right for your community.
Delegates will learn about what‘s new in development policy for community housing, including:
- How your community can get the right sort of homes to meet the needs of local people
- How landowners can bring forward land for community housing without throwing the baby out with the bathwater
- What Cross-subsidy on rural exception sites means
- Community Land Trusts and Community Right to Build
- Self-Build Projects: different solutions for different needs
- Co-housing projects
Places are limited, so register for your place soon at: https://ccberks.wufoo.com/forms/qhyl9wk1egeq2e/
10am to 3pm, Tuesday 23rd September 2014
Council Chamber, West Berkshire District Council, Market Street, Newbury RG14 5LD
For more information call Arlene Kersley at CCB on: 0118 961 2000 or email: arlene.kersley@ccberks.org.uk
Please click here to download the draft flyer and agenda.
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