Leader's blog - w/c 6 January 2025

“Happy new year to you all! I hope you enjoyed a good break over the festive period. I had a great time catching up with family and friends, and the holiday was a good opportunity to reflect on the past year and challenges ahead for 2025.

Ensuring that everyone has a warm and affordable home, is a key priority all year round, and has certainly been front of mind for me, during the recent cold weather, given the cost of home heating and the huge number of people locally who are in housing need. So I was delighted to see confirmation of new contracts for building council homes just before Christmas. Speller Metcalfe has been confirmed as the construction company to lead work with Stroud District Council to build 44 new affordable homes during 2025 and 2026 across three sites in Wotton-under-Edge, Dursley and Cam. All the new properties will be constructed on council-owned brownfield sites, and benefit from funding contributions from the Government’s Brownfield Land Release Fund and the Homes England Affordable Homes programme. Importantly, these new homes will be well insulated and built to high energy efficiency standards, with solar panels and air source heat pumps instead of gas boilers, to help to keep heating costs low. Wouldn’t it be great if ALL new homes were built to the same high standards!

For anyone looking to save money and improve their home energy efficiency this year, there is help available from the Energy Savings Trust and the Severn Wye Energy Agency. It’s worth also looking out for an exciting new scheme for Gloucestershire householders which will be launching soon!”

Cllr Catherine Braun, Leader of Stroud District Council