Summer events

The Tir y Gafel ecovillage is open for visitors, volunteers and courses.

Bear in mind the project is still very much in the building phase - we are two years into a five year set-up period.

Building Regulations

It seems that there may be a solution emerging in the stand-off between Lammas residents and Pembrokeshire County Council Building Control department.

Following much work from both sides, on Monday 23rd January at Haverfordwest Magistrates Court the Council agreed that Paul and Hoppi Wimbush (of plot 6) were now fully compliant with Building Regulations and all charges against them were dropped.

Schedules of works for the other two plots with legal charges against them (Simon Dale and Jasmine Saville of plot 7, Katy Taggart and Leander Wolstenholme of plot 2) have been agreed and should residents adhere to the timescales (aiming for resolution of all outstanding issues by May 2012) then the Council has indicated that charges against these two families will also be dropped.

It was recognised in Court by the Council that the Lammas project is pioneering new ground and that special consideration was required in how Building Regulations were applied to low-impact development given the use of raw natural materials and innovative solutions being adopted by such projects.

The Big Discussion

Lammas members and representatives met on Sunday 15th January to consider, discuss and debate the organisation's future strategy regarding supporting the emergence of an ecovillage network in West Wales.

For the most part the day was concerned with the question 'What is the most robust model for an ecovillage, in terms of providing long term security along with empowerment of the residents?'

People were in agreement that a model which empowered residents in acting as 'stewards of the land' and retained a 'guardian of the project' was beneficial.

The current model currently takes the form of residents having a 999year leasehold and Lammas retaining the freehold.

There are many questions still to consider and there will be a follow-up meeting shortly. 

Building Regulations

Pembrokeshire County Council have been stepping up the legal pressure on the 3 Tir-y-Gafel families facing criminal court proceedings for contravention of the Building Regulations.

The Lammas families are fully engaging with the Council’s Building Control Officers in trying to find solutions however there are problems with interpretations.

The key to understanding the Building Regulations framework is in acknowledging that the actual Building Regulations (in 15 parts labelled A – P) are relatively concise. You could probably fit the lot onto a single A4 page. Most of them are designed to be flexible in interpretation. For example, Part F is ‘There shall be adequate means of ventilation provided for people in the building.’ That is it. That is the legal requirement. Then there are the ‘approved documents’ which set out conventional solutions and interpretations. It is quite legal to adopt alternative solutions so long as you can justify them. Therein lies the challenge.

Our experience to date is that the Council’s Building Control Officers are unwilling to depart from the conventional solutions in the approved documents. Normally if there is a dispute of this kind, the Secretary of State (or the Welsh Government in Wales) has the power to ‘determine’ whether the alternative solution complies with the actual Building Regulation. Unfortunately this solution is not normally available if the building works have already been completed. This is a challenge for low-impact development, which generally approaches building in a much more organic and fluid way.

From December 31st 2011, the Welsh Government will take full control of the Building Regulation framework within Wales and will be conducting a full review of the system. Lammas has been lobbying for the consideration of low-impact development as an integral part of this review. Simon Dale and Jasmine Saville have recently put together an excellent paper about this:

In the meantime Paul Wimbush has been lobbying the Welsh Government to allow retrospective determinations for low-impact developments and is trying to set this precedent. This would create some kind of interim solution. The alternative is that future conflicts of interpretation (of which there will be many) will need to go through the court systems for resolution. It is in nobody’s interests for this to happen.

   Autumn arrives

Following a very busy summer which included 19 open days, 4 volunteer weeks, 3 experience weeks, 2 ecovillage conferences along with a multitude of other educational/ experiental activities the Tir y Gafel residents are now taking some time to have a rest and focus on their plots. There are a number of new structures underway including a pole-frame cow barn, a cruck frame workshop, a roundhouse and more.

In addition the harvests are being collected with a good year for berries and pumpkins.

As a collective we are currently concentrating on getting the hydro turbine operational. This includes a lot of messing around with water, pipes and generators.

   Building Regulations

plot 2 residents fitting a radon barrier in their workshop (which will double up as temporary accomodation)

Some Tir y Gafel residents have been having difficulty with the Building Regulations framework. This is in part due to the framework not being designed to accommodate natural/ low-impact building techniques, in part due to the use of agricultural barns and workshops as temporary accommodation and in part due to ongoing communication challenges with Pembrokeshire County Council.

Pembrokeshire County Council had issued Court Summons against four of the Tir y Gafel ecovillage families. This was partly in response to procedural issues (in that 2 families have not yet submitted formal applications) as well as technical violations (in that certain building regulations are not being met).

However upon attendance at court it became apparent that this action was intended to threaten rather than criminalise the ecovillage residents, and that the Council were unwilling to pursue punitive measures at this stage.

The Council are now encouraging ecovillage residents to apply for relaxations and dispensations of Building Regulations requirements. This relatively unknown mechanism allows for Local Authorities (and/ or National Governments) to relax or dispense with aspects of Building Regulations on receipt of an application describing the evidence and/or reasoning that would justify such an approach.

Those Tir y Gafel residents who were previously considered to be violating Building Regulations are currently applying for relaxations/ dispensations.

Lammas is optimistic that a reasonable solution will win through in the end.

Annual Monitoring Report

Lammas has produced the first annual report for the Tir y Gafel ecovillage:

In its first year the project met 9% of its household needs directly from the land and achieved a 1.36 planet footprint.

Community Hub

The Community Hub build is now nearing completion:

Unfortunately, as is so often the case with construction, we have gone over-time and over-budget. If you would like to help with this, the best thing you can do is buy a share.

Building Regulations

For those who have not yet seen the latest Undercurrents video about Lammas, we once again find ourselves struggling to fit into the boxes of beaurocracy.

Some of the Tir y Gafel residents began their plot developments by building their barns. This was as much about coming to grips with low-impact building as it was about providing temporary accomodation whilst residents built their houses.

Unfortunately to live temporarily in a barn requires building regulations.

We are also discovering that there is a large disconnect between the planning requirements for low-impact building (under the new policies) and the building regulations requirements for new dwellings.

As a result we have a mixed approach to the situation depending on the perspectives and situations of the residents. Some residents have put in building regulations applications for their agricultural buildings and are attempting to bring them up to building regulations standards so that they can be used as temporary accomodation. Other residents are seeking alternative ways around the situation. In some cases there may be recourse to legal action.

Whilst Lammas remains committed to working with local authorities, the paperwork burden of needing to submit building regulations applications on agricultural buildings (as well as bringing the buildings up to regulations standards) is an additional hurdle for the Tir y Gafel residents, whose main task in hand is that of creating fully-functioning permaculture smallholdings from depleted farmland within a five year period.

We nonetheless remain optimistic.

The Community Hub build is now in full swing:

       The Hub build on a winters morning             Acting Foreman Simon Dale

Volunteers building straw bale walls    One of the rooflights under construction

The Community Hub frame is now complete:

The Community Hub will enable Lammas to promote low-impact development in Wales. It will provide a base from which to run tours, courses and open days.

It is being built using local timber and straw, using natural building techniques to create a structure that will in time become a beacon of inspiration for a greener future.

We are now planning for a concerted effort to complete this build by the end of March 2010. As a result we are running a series of one-off volunteer weeks that will offer a unique opportunity to contribute to a momentous build.

A few pics to show how we are getting on:

plot 6 barn under construction              plot 1 barn under construction

plot 1 polytunnel                             plot 8 roundhouse

July 2010: The Welsh Assembly Government has launched its new TAN 6 policy. This policy creates a low-impact development provision across the whole of Wales.

Click here to read the new One Planet Development Policy. The policy is now planning law across Wales.

As a result Lammas coordinated an ecovillage gathering in August to explore how to set up an ecovillage project in Wales.

Lammas ecovillage Gathering, photo by Amanda Jackson

One of the offshoots from this gathering is an internet discussion group:

click here to connect to the discussion group.

Works are underway at Lammas:

  Timber frame barn under construction             Newly planted plum trees

     Roundhouse nearing completion                   Laying an earthen floor        

          Earth-sheltered house                Rammed stone foundations for the Hub

If you are keen to visit, click here for details

If you would like to support this project, click here to buy a share.

Approximately 150 people attended Lammas' first ever tour of the project. Visitors were guided around the site to view the developments to date. Feedback from the day has been very positive indeed.

Building works on the ecovillage are continuing apace:

        Roundhouse on plot 7                          New polytunnel on plot 1

      Raising a barn wall on plot 6                     Mike the volunteer on plot 8

February 2010

The last Lammas plot (plot 4) has become available. Lammas is seeking someone/ a family for Plot 4 - one of the terrace plots. The plot will be allocated through an application process in which interested people are asked to assemble an outline plot plan. Examples of full plot plans can be viewed in the Lammas planning application.

The deadline for applications is 21st April.

The leasehold will cost £40,000 and successful applicants will need to be prepared to move quickly.

If you are interested in self-building an eco-home, establishing a land-based livelihood and being part of a pioneering ecovillage then please contact Lammas and ask for an application pack.

Now that the snow and ice have passed works have begun again at Lammas. Some residents are focusing on tree planting, others on landscaping and others on building.

                       Milling timber ready for building                                      Laying the first timbers, plot 6

                               Gardening on Plot 1                                                            New build on plot 7

Building works have been put on hold at Lammas since late December when freezing weather conditions hit the site. These have continued on til early january and look set to stay for at least another fortnight. Such conditions have not been experienced in this part of the world for many years.

                                Snow Blizzard                                                 The new trackway on a winters morning

               Plot 1 (with temporary accomodation)                                 Compost toilet in the snow

The latest episode on Lammas is now available:

Click here to watch the latest mini film of Lammas

The Lammas ecovillage project won a £350,000 grant today to build a centre for the research, education and promotion of low-impact development. The building will form a centrepiece to a new-build project of 9 eco-smallholdings in the Preseli Hills in North Pembrokeshire.

The grant is part of a UK government initiative in which 10 community projects from across the UK have been awarded up to £500,000 for pioneering carbon-reduction approaches.

Model of the proposed community hub education centre at Lammas, North Pembrokeshire

The Lammas project promises low-carbon lifestyles, carbon neutral housing and carbon positive livelihoods, with a projected net carbon sequestration rate of approximately 90 tonnes CO2 per year. The residents will source all their water, heating fuel and electricity from the land and will develop land-based micro-enterprises supplying food and craft to the locality.

Paul Wimbush, Lammas project coordinator, said:

“We are absolutely delighted to have won funding for our community education centre. This will enable us to reach out and inspire people to create their own sustainable land-based lifestyles. The 'Community Hub' building will be a launch-pad that will celebrate and promote the new opportunities that are available to create eco-smallholdings in the open countryside. Opportunities that provide self-build homes, create carbon-positive livelihoods and revitalise our rural economy, all in a way that benefits our natural environment.”

The Lammas project benefits from a new planning policy initiative in Pembrokeshire called ‘Policy 52, low-impact development’, under which new eco-smallholdings are permitted in the open countryside if they are able to demonstrate a sincere commitment to sustainability. There are now 12 households in Pembrokeshire benefiting from the policy, the most recent being a small woodland enterprise, Coedwig Blaen Llwydiarth in Maenclochog, in which Jenny Carr and Tony Cutajar were granted temporary permission for a dwelling by a Welsh Assembly Planning Inspector two weeks ago.

There are plans afoot within the Welsh Assembly to expand the Pembrokeshire Planning Initiative to being available across the whole of Wales.

Paul Wimbush continues:  “We have an unprecedented opportunity here to transform rural Wales by simply working within a robust framework in which people can build themselves an eco-smallholding if they are truly committed to sustainability. What is more, it is completely affordable - the average Lammas smallholdings cost approximately £80,000. The potential here is enormous. Wales is committed to becoming a one-planet nation by 2050. The best incentive that you can give people to live a one-planet lifestyle is a self-reliant eco-home in the countryside with a potential livelihood attached.”

The news comes as the first building of the Lammas project is nearing completion; a turf-roofed roundhouse which will provide temporary accommodation for Simon Dale, Jasmine Saville and their two children whilst the family builds the rest of their smallholding. The building took two months, cost under £4000 and attracted over 50 volunteers. It incorporates straw-bale walls and a rammed earth floor.

Lammas residents welcoming the news outside the first Lammas building.

Construction on the Community Hub building will begin in February 2010 and take 12 months to complete. The building will be made largely from locally sourced tree-trunks stacked up in a Canadian log-cabin style and will include a range of innovative features such as a prototype wood-powered cooker. It will incorporate a café and a shop and will sell produce from both Lammas residents and other local people engaged in land-based livelihoods. The Lammas project plans to run its first open day in April 2010.

Nerys Evans, Assembly Member for Mid and West Wales said:

"I'm extremely pleased to support the Lammas project. I've visited the site on a couple of occasions and am very impressed with the positive vision they have for the area. We currently face many economic and environmental challenges and the work being carried out by Lammas in tackling these issues at a local level is vital.

We are all living beyond our means, and it's important for us when building a sustainable future to look at what's possible within our own communities and villages.  It's vital therefore that we learn from the Lammas scheme and I look forward to seeing the completed project."

Lammas has just completed an initial report into its carbon impact.

It suggests that the lifestyle carbon impacts of the Lammas residents will be reduced by an estimated 75% as a result of the project (from an average 15.2 tonnes CO2/ year to 3.5 tonnes CO2/ year.

It suggests that the houses will be carbon neutral.

What is most interesting though is the carbon impact as a result of the change in land use. Prior to the project the land (31 hectares) was emitting an estimated 7 tonnes CO2/ year. Within a few years the carbon sequestration levels will be an estimated 120 tonnes CO2/ year.

That is to say that on balance the Lammas project, once established, will be locking an estimated 88 tonnes CO2/ year into the soil and ecosystem biomass.

Click here to read the Lammas Carbon Investigation.

Meanwhile works on the project continue apace with the new entranceway and the first stucture approaching completion:

New entranceway under construction                              First building approaching completion

                Insulating a roof with straw bales                                               Sunset over millpond

Lammas is a grass-roots organisation that has benefited from a huge amount of good-will input from members, friends and supporters. This input has been invaluable in enabling the project to get this far. A big thanks to all of you who have been involved in the project to date.

If you would like to get involved there are a few options:

• You can volunteer your time and skills to help the project.
• For just £25 you can become a life-long friend of Lammas.
• For £50 you can become a member and shareholder of the organisation.

Thankyou.

Two months on from planning we are getting stuck in to building works at Lammas

Lammas sign                           Lammas yurt with trackway construction behind

Leander and diggerman John talking          Lewis laying a foundation stone

                          Constructing the first roundhouse

Two months on from planning permission and four of the families are now living on site, with the other 5 families rounding up their affairs and getting ready to move. The trackways and water networks are under construction and some of the families have begun building. The autumn weather has been kind to us so far and whilst the weather turns colder, activity on the land is beginning to warm up.

Lammas won planning permission today

A big thankyou to all of you who have supported us in setting this groundbreaking precedent.

The Lammas planning saga is approaching an end...

A hearing was held on 28th July at Preseli School in Crymych, Pembrokeshire.

                Planning Inspector, Andrew Poulter     Expert witnesses Rupert Hawley, Andy Goldring, Simon Fairlie

                                    The Audience                                                Paul Wimbush, representing Lammas

Approximately 150-200 people attended, and a wide range of issues were explored.

The Planning Inspector will make his final decision by 27th August.

Lammas holds fortnightly meetings and we welcome people interested in supporting both the ecovillage project and the wider vision of Lammas (as an umbrella organisation promoting low-impact development) to come and contribute to the meetings.

For details of the next meeting, please contact us.

Lammas meeting, spring 2009