stop that pigeon!

'how odd, all the news and letters we get from paris now coming by balloons and carrier pigeons...' - kilvert's diary, 3rd october 1870. 

it's 1870. paris is besieged by the germans.

'paris has never known an october like this. the clear, starry nights are like nights in the south of france . god loves the prussians.' - edmond de goncourt, the goncourt journals, 3rd october 1870..

horsemouth was raised on stop that pigeon where dick dastardly and mutley went after wacky races. the theme music was based on early jazz tune  tiger rag. the weather will not hold. it will be a very harsh winter for the besieged parisians.

this morning a bright sunny morning but cold. 

and on the subject of cold   

- how is the plan to insulate the properties of the communal endeavour going? 

horsemouth has started doing the reading on the warm homes: social housing fund wave 3.

if the communal endeavour bid for this and are successful in their bid this would pay roughly £7,500 of the cost of retrofitting each of the endeavour's 11  EPC D properties to EPC C and one EPC E property to as near to EPC C as can be achieved within the funding constraints. one endeavour property at EPC C already could perhaps be billed for on an infill basis. 

this would be of great assistance in meeting the government's 2030 deadline for the retrofit of all social housing  to an EPC C standard. 

where as previous waves required a minimum number of properties (100), and a consortium to be formed to provide that minimum number of properties, wave 3 does not require this. there is no minimum number of properties and Co-ops not in a consortium can apply. 

this fund opened for applications in the week beginning 30th september 2024 and will close at midday on 25th november 2024. this is a tight timescale but the endeavour has already done a lot of the work before for our wave 2.2 bid. 

successful projects will be notified 'early in 2025' (which probably means march if last time was anything to go by). all grant funding must be spent by 31st march 2028. 

the best route forward would  be to consult with the various people then circulate this email round the communal endeavour aiming to get their permission to go ahead soon.  this scheme can not be used to pay for boiler replacement (probably the quickest and most efficient route for raising house energy performance) but (as far as horsemouth understands it) as long as the endeavour pay for it themselves there is nothing to stop them from doing on their own.