Accidental Environmentalist
By Branson, Adam
* Stan Crawford managing director, Sherwood Energy Village When Sherwood Energy Village was devised in the mid-1990s, jobs came first.The man in charge of the eco-development believes it’s a lesson the Government would do well to heed
Getting to Sherwood Energy Village by public transport is difficult. In fact, it’s almost impossible. Arriving at Newark by train, I asked a woman behind the ticket counter how to get to New Ollerton – the former mining community where Sherwood Energy Village (SEV) is based. This drew a blank. Okay, how about directions to the bus station? “Sorry, I don’t use buses,” she replied.
After a good mile’s walk across town, I found the bus station, although this didn’t get me any closer to a solution: the service can be described as patchy at best. So, after hailing a cab, I spent the rest of my journey contemplating how a development that can’t easily be accessed by public transport can possibly be described as environmentallyfriendly. Thankfully, Stan Crawford, managing director at SEV, was able to answer my question, so my journey had not been made on a false premise.
SEV was set up in response to the closure of the Nottinghamshire collieries in the early-1990s, when the community in New Ollerton lost its major source of employment. Fortunately, Crawford, then a miner and union representative, had been thinking about what the town could do for itself if the local mine was to close. “We had already started looking at what we could do to diversify the economic base of the community,” says Crawford. “We’d started thinking: we’re a community built for mining, we ‘re ten miles from the nearest town, we’re 20 miles from Nottingham. How do we recreate the jobs here?”
After a public meeting in the town hall, the people of New Ollerton came to two conclusions: if there was no longer going to be a mine, they wanted rid of the muck associated with it; and they wanted more control over their lives.
Realising that control requires ownership, Crawford approached British Coal and said he wanted to buy the colliery site. “At first they didn’t believe me,” he says. “Then they offered the site for Pounds 1, but wanted 100 per centof profits we made from it.Then we entered negotiations that took almost two years.”
Eventually, Crawford persuaded British Coal to sell the site to the community for Pounds 50,000, along with an interest-free mortgage and a clause stating that repayment was to begin only when the site starting turning a profit.
Once the land had been bought, the next step involved working out what to do with it. The consultation process was long and boisterous, says Crawford. “But it didn’t matter which way we thought about it, it kept coming back to energy,” he says. “What we had to do was to create a unique selling point that would attract industry.That’s when we hit upon what people these days call sustainable development only we were talking about it in 1996.”
The model that Crawford developed was simple, yet effective. The village offers land for development to companies looking to relocate. Those firms are required to build to ‘very good’ standards, as defined by the Building Research Establishment environmental assessment method – a tool for rating buildings’ environmental performance – and to work closely with SEV to ensure that the local community benefit from the scheme. The strategy has proved successful, and a number of firms, such as leisure operator Center Parcs, have moved their head office to the site.
“When the pits closed, we had horrendous rates of unemployment. Now we’re below the national average at around three per cent,” Crawford says. “We set ourselves the aim of creating 1,000 jobs in 20 years. We’re now 14 years in, and with Nottinghamshire County Council this month relocating some of its offices here, we’ll have exceeded that target.”
However, if all of those jobs are being done by people commuting by car from outside New Ollerton, SEV would be failing in both its social and environmental aims. But, Crawford insists, that isn’t the case.
Indeed, there is a conspicuous lack of cars parked on the SEV site, especially when you consider that for all its environmental credentials, it is still essentially an industrial estate. The reason for this is that as jobs are created, people are choosing to move to New Ollerton, rather than driving there every day.
“This is the fastest-growing town in Newark and Sherwood [District Council area], and it’s the fastest growing town in North Nottinghamshire,” says Crawford, adding that developer Miller Homes is building 350 houses on a site next to SEV.
The main lesson to take from SEV’s example is not the quality of the buildings on the site or how many jobs have been taken up by local people, it is the sequence of events that led to it. Unlike the Government’s proposed eco-towns, which are mainly housing-led, SEV created the jobs first and let the housing follow. As a result,people don’t just live or work in the town, they live and work in the town, with all the environmental, economic and social benefits that entails. What’s more, the housing growth makes it easier for Crawford to lobby for better public transport: he is currently campaigning for a disused railway line, which runs adjacent to the site, to be brought back into use.
“I’ve looked at the proposed new eco-towns and wonder if they’re just commuter towns, where you have a zero-carbon footprint until you get in your car to go to work,” says Crawford. “It doesn’t make any sense.” And with that, he offers me a lift to the station in a petrol/electric hybrid, naturally.
Adam Branson
CV HIGHLIGHTS
1979 Begins work as a miner at the Bevercotes Colliery, Nottinghamshire.
1984 Appointed branch secretary and area president for the National Union of Miners.
1994 Begins work as a volunteer on what will become the Sherwood Energy Village.
2000 Becomes managing director at SEV.
2007 Made an OBE.
Copyright Haymarket Business Publications Ltd. Jul 4, 2008
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