Donate here via the QR Code or https://gofund.me/e1f59522

Thank you for your interest.

I am writing to request your help for our village school by offering an opportunity to ‘Sponsor a Solar Panel’. Each gift of £250 will generate at least £2,380 of savings to the school over the panel’s lifetime. It will also redirect spending on teaching the children rather than running the facility.

Lea & Garsdon CE Primary School opened its wonderful extension in 2022 but just as energy costs rose substantially. Fortunately, it has two empty south-facing pitched roofs ideally placed to house 160 or so solar panels and the potential for about 60 panels on the older part of the building.

We want to cover these roofs with solar panels. We can then:

• Buy much less fossil-fuel generated electricity from the National Grid;
• Export surplus electricity to the Grid to offset our costs further;
• Spend more of our precious funding on our children’s education rather than paying for energy; and
• Help move us as a county, nation and world towards decarbonisation and a net zero carbon balance.

Those are all very worthwhile objectives: each one is beneficial in its own right.

Investing in solar panels will cost circa £102,000. We could get a loan from Wiltshire Council but this would need to be repaid with interest. Whilst we are actively seeking help from grant-funding bodies, we would also ask for your help to minimise the debt we need to take on. It offers all of you the chance to help us and support decarbonisation.

We are asking if you would ‘Sponsor a Solar Panel’ at a cost per panel of £250. If all 220 panels were sponsored this would raise £55,000, actually £13,750 more if it were all Gifted Aided via the school’s charity, the PTFA (with a potential tax benefit to you too). That is two thirds of the total required. This would make a huge difference to the size of our loan and the time it would take us to repay it.

The lifespan of the panels is in excess of 20 years. Over that period each and every panel will have saved the school £2,380 in costs in today’s prices – a return of almost tenfold on your gift – with significant environmental benefit too!

We know how much the school is valued in Lea, Garsdon and further afield, particularly given the excellent Ofsted and OPAL reports received just a few months ago. Your contribution to this ‘green’ initiative will be instrumental in allowing the school to do even more for its children and benefit from the excellent education on offer.

Please support us if you possibly can.

How to contribute

You are invited to buy as many solar panels as you would like. If you can’t afford a whole £250, any contribution, however small, is very much appreciated.

Please use the QR code above or type in our hypertext link https://gofund.me/e1f59522 both of which take you to our ‘GoFundMe’ page,  remembering to tick the Gift Aid box which increases the value of your gift by 25%.

You are equally welcome to contribute by cheque or by cash. Please bring your donation to the school office. For this to be Gift Aided, a Gift Aid form must be completed. There is a form at the end of this letter or the school office has some.

We have included a Q&A section below where you can find more detail on the scheme. We are confident with your help we can make this happen.

With sincere thanks for your help.

Dr Phil Yates

Chair of Governors, Lea & Garsdon CE Primary School

Questions and Answers

Why didn’t you cover the roofs in solar panels when the extension was first built?

The building extension was supplied to us and is still owned by Wiltshire Council which commissioned the building work. We only took possession of it on completion. The Council’s capital budget was limited and they only needed legally to meet carbon emissions levels. The new extension is heated by air-source heat pumps, built to the latest environmental standards, but which are electrically driven. That, and the global rise in energy costs since 2022, has meant the school’s electricity bills have risen fourfold since its opening from £7,000 to £28,000 per annum. The architects’ brief did not include minimising school running costs. None of the other schools built in the county at the same time had solar panels fitted either. The Council acknowledge informally in retrospect that they missed an opportunity here.

When did Wiltshire Council start their loan scheme?

Our governing body approached the Council in August 2024. We took a business case to them proposing a loan scheme to schools that would give the Council a reasonable rate of return but which also helps secure a long-term benefit for their investment by reduction in energy costs for schools. It also moves the authority towards their own 2030 carbon reduction targets. As a consequence they have developed and launched a ‘School Energy Efficiency Loan Scheme’. The Council are inviting Lea & Garsdon Primary to be the first school to take up the scheme and act as an exemplar. Ours will be an early adopter in Wiltshire schools of solar PV which again signals the school’s proactive and energetic engagement with important national developments.

Why doesn’t the school just use the loan scheme then, rather than coming to the community?

The loan brings with it interest charges. The maximum loan available through the scheme is £100,000 and has to be repaid within 10 years. We expect the Council’s interest rate to be fixed at around 5.2% for the duration of the loan. Total repayment on £100,000 debt would be £124,780 and annual repayment would be £15,598.

The solar panels will generate income from the outset. However, if, say, we only had to borrow £60,000 our loan, at the same repayment rate, would be fully paid off in 4 years and 5 months after which all, rather than only part of, the savings could be ploughed back directly into the children’s teaching and learning. It is therefore in the school’s interests to minimise its borrowings from the Council.

What else is the governing body proposing to do?

• It is planning to install some battery storage of electricity. Though initially pricey, it more than pays for itself in the savings it generates by reducing the need to buy in electricity.
• It is aiming to rationalise the whole site’s power supply, thus maximising efficiency.
• It is also looking at minimising its use of electricity by doing all we can to save on power usage (e.g. installing LEDs, switching off lights and devices that consume power, setting up a pupil eco-council to help, closing doors and windows whenever possible).
• It is actively approaching organisations that might be able to assist us with grants. Any suggestions in this area would be welcome.

Why would I want to support the school in this?

There are many reasons:

• The school is a pivotal part of our local community, attracting young families to the area. Its finances are under pressure from efficiency-requiring settlements from central government;
• Many of you and your families have long-term relationships with the school and this is an opportunity to mark that association;
• Many of us want to help the planet stop burning fossil fuels. Sponsor a Solar Panel gives you the direct opportunity to do this. Every £250 you invest gives a payback of at least £2,380 in today’s money – more if the panels last longer than 20 years which is likely. That’s a tremendous return on your gift for the school, the community and your planet;
• It means more of the school’s income (i.e. your taxation) can be spent on the delivery of the curriculum rather than buying energy.

What is the environmental effect of the work?

Below is the quoted estimate of the effects of the solar and battery scheme: -

What will the solar panels look like?

They will be professionally fitted meeting all the legal obligations for quality. They will cover both south-facing pitches of the school extension building and a number on the roof of the older building. They will be black in colour, silent and reasonably unobtrusive.

When will the work take place?

Each and every year we have solar and batteries in place, we will avoid £18,000 in irretrievable electricity costs. The governors are therefore keen to get this installed as soon as our procurement and contracting processes are finalised, our various permissions legally in place and we can finance it – which is where you can help us. Although quite quick to fit a solar array, we will be keen to avoid any disruption to the life of the school so we are hoping to install them this summer holiday period if possible.

What is the PTFA and why use them?

PTFA stands for the ‘Parent, Teacher and Friends Association’. It is a registered charity number 1073265 and is a very important support for the school, putting on events and raising school funds for items not financed by Wiltshire Council. Just to be clear, funds coming into the PTFA under the ‘Sponsor a Solar Panel’ scheme will be entirely separate from other PTFA funds and money will not move between the two ‘pots’.

Because it is a charity, donations to the PTFA can be supplemented, if you a UK taxpayer, by ‘Gift Aid’ at no extra cost to you (and you may be able to reclaim tax from HMRC on your donation too). Just tick the Gift Aid box on the GoFundMe site.  Once again, to donate, please use the QR Code above or use the hyperlink https://gofund.me/e1f59522.  We only need the Gifts Aid form on the next page completed by you if you are contributing cash or cheques.

If you have further questions or comments we are keen to try to address them with you. Thank you for your interest and support. Please lodge any comments with the school office.