Neen Sollars Community Hydro

Our hydro installation will go ahead as planned despite some of the worst floods in the Rea for around 60 years. Many people will have seen news reports of the severe floods at Neen Sollars. As well as the damage to the road bridge, there was severe flooding at the Mill itself. The Co-op extends its heartfelt sympathy to John Bettinson who has sustained damage to house and garden.

With regard to the hydro project, the NSCH Board have been reviewing the designs and schedule. The installation has always been designed to cope with floods of this magnitude.  The biggest problem is debris – ultimately the solution lies in management of the whole catchment, but we need to make sure our equipment is well protected and will be making some design improvements to help cope with the possibility of more frequent severe flooding. We remain on schedule to install this Autumn and start generating early in 2013 – more detail will be supplied as available – watch this space.

The share allocations have finally been finished and the share certificates sent out. The project has been remarkably successful in getting local support with over 90% of members coming from within 30 miles of the site. A deposit has been paid on a turbine from Ampair and the civil works are being planned so everything is ready for the final installation later in the year.

We’re delighted to say the share offer is complete for Neen Sollars. After a late rush we ended up 5% oversubscribed. We will be allocating shares based on proximity to the site over the next days and share certificates will be sent out next week. We’ll also be moving forward with the ordering of equipment for the site – Summer is almost on us. Thankyou to all our prospective members.

We are nearly there – over 90% of the money raised. Therefore we have decided to extend the deadline just until Friday 11 May. If you have already applied for shares already you may wish to consider increasing your holding – and if you are local and want to be a member this is your last chance!

You may have heard the sad news about the death of Mrs Angela Bettinson on March 9th. She and her husband, John, owners of Tetstill Mill, have been the most wonderful supporters of our project to establish community hydropower on their land at the Mill on the River Rea.

Out of respect for the Bettinson family at this difficult time we decided to place the share offer on hold when we heard the news. Following Mrs Bettinson’s funeral and burial in Neen Sollars (All Saints’ Church and grounds) late last week we are re-initiating the project share offer. We have decided to extend the closing date from April 18th to April 30th. However, it is important that site work commences as soon as possible in order for us to meet our target of an early autumn start-up. In order for this to happen we would like all share applications* in early – please, if possible, don’t wait until the official closing date. We are almost one third of the way with about £50K raised to date. Let’s make the remaining £100K our target for the Easter weekend!

*Share applications can be found within the Share Offer Document (available for download here), or a hard copy may be obtained by writing to the following address: Sharenergy, 22 Corve Street, Ludlow SY8 1DA Shropshire, or by calling Sharenergy on: 01584 875881

It is with great sadness that we have learnt of the death of Mrs Angela Bettinson and in deference to the Bettinson family at this difficult time we have decided to put active promotion of our share offer on hold until discussions over the future of the project can be undertaken.

Please note: We regard this as an interim measure with the outcome that the share offer period will be extended. As a consequence we intend to retain prospective shareholders’ monies received to date. This will be refunded in full if it is decided the project cannot proceed. Any shareholder however who wishes to withdraw from this project can apply for immediate return of funds.

We have reached 25% of our target as of today -thanks to everyone and keep them coming!

• If you need a hard copy of the share offer document please tell us (there’s a quick form on the website to request one)
• If you have questions please call us 01584 875881
• If anybody else wants to subscribe to the email mailing list there is a link on the home page

We’ve added the emails of everybody who signed up at the launch event to our mailing list so you they’ll sent news as it comes in.

The project has received more coverage on the BBC website, detailing our recently launched share offer.

The Share Offer Document has now been added to the Downloads section (direct link).