We started 2011 with our big recruitment drive. Thanks to our hard-working supporters and street champions, we leafleted 8,000 households in Oxford North, organised public meetings, gave talks at social and community events, organised stalls in Summertown and as a result signed up over 300 new supporters. As a culmination of this we held our Low-Carbon Living Fair in March and recently planted 400 trees in Cutteslowe – helping to create a new ‘carbon corner’.

We also set up ONCORE, whose share offer raised over £150,000 and which has successfully installed solar panels on the roof of Cherwell School before the new deadline of 12 December suddenly imposed by the Government. Income from ONCORE will come to LCON for our low-carbon activities for 25 years.

We set up our website, which now has an average of a dozen hits a day, and have been developing our Twitter presence (we are @LowCon if you want to follow us).

We achieved charitable status, which enables us to apply for many more grants to broaden our range of activities. In 2011 we raised £45,000 from grants and donations.

We welcomed our 4 patrons, Tim Stevenson (Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire), Sir Muir Gray, Councillor Jean Fooks and Philip Pullman as influential supporters of LCON.  Tim Stevenson kindly hosted a very successful drinks party for us to introduce community members to the ONCORE share offer, and we look forward to working with the patrons for further activities in 2012.

We had a lovely fun Apple Day in October, welcoming over 100 people and pressing well over 100 bottles of juice. We partnered with Wolvercote Farmers Market in the summer and helped them run the market in Summertown.

We’ve run our first Low Carbon Living Programme and two Carbon Conversations groups, with a third about to start and now four facilitators trained to run the programme. We have helped 27 people to measure their carbon footprint using the Quicksilver software.

We started sharing information on eco-renovations and in November we held our first open homes weekend.

And finally, we were delighted that our hard work was recognised when in October we received an award in the Oxfordshire Charity and Volunteer Awards 2011.

At the time of writing (19 December) we are working hard on a bid for a government grant to help us support the local community in preparing for the Green Deal. We are also putting together plans to work more closely with our street champions in 2012 – on travel,  food and consumption, renewables and community engagement. Watch this space. If we are successful with the grant bid we will be looking for a project manager for 2 months in January; so sharpen your CV!