Totnes Town Transition Group

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change pursuant to the answer of 22 February 2010, Official Report, columns 74-5W, on the Totnes Town Transition Group, by what mechanisms the monitoring and evaluation plan will capture evidence of project impacts and promote community dialogue and shared learning; what timetable has been set for completion of that plan; what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of that plan; and what programmes will be funded from the grant of £625,000. (322041)

The Low Carbon Community Challenge research programme will use the following mechanisms as part of the monitoring and evaluation plan in order to capture evidence of project impacts and promote community dialogue and shared learning:

Capturing baseline hard data and historic trends on domestic and non-domestic energy use in buildings in each of the 22 communities.

Socio-economic and environmental behaviour data captured using a household survey across the successful communities—one before the challenge begins and one at the end—involving a sample of residents in each community.

Public dialogue: A series of facilitated events in each of the 22 communities to understand the emerging lessons from the Challenge—for the project, the partners as well as for policy making.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of the LCCC as a programme.

The plan started in February 2010 and will be completed in March 2012. The estimated cost to the public purse of the evaluation plan over the two years is between £900,000 and £1,300,000.