Completed Projects

Events are held frequently across the city, so far events we have supported in 2024 include.

3 Together Big Local ECO Conference- Hetton Primary School, Easington Lane Primary School and Hetton Lyons Primary School took part in a conference including workshops around being Eco friendly and helping the environment. 8 workshops were delivered by various partners across the day.

Common Purpose- Common Purpose - This programme brought together 50, 18-25-year-olds who live, work or study in the city, to help make it a cleaner, greener city for future generations. 

ICOS Earth Day Family Picnic: Local residents were invited to enjoy a day filled with fun activities spreading environmental awareness at Backhouse Park, this included stalls from environmental groups, A Bug World Workshop and healthy picnics.

Expo Come Outside- Local residents of Sunderland were invited to come along and find out more about Riverside Park, to try out a whole range of community-based activities centred around health, wellbeing and exercise. This included free-to-book low and high impact exercise sessions, electric driving tasters and City Hall tours. Bike repairs, nature activities, arts and crafts and sessions to promote sustainability, health and wellbeing.

Greener Big Lunch – Families living in Farringdon enjoyed a day of fun activities thanks to a partnership between Gentoo, Sunderland City Council and a number of local partners. More than 200 residents attended The Big Lunch at Farringdon Youth and Community Centre and took part in fun activities. Families also got the chance to learn more about the environment and how to be more sustainable from Gentoo’s Asset Sustainability Team and Sunderland City Council’s Low Carbon Team.

Sunderland Climate Friendly Schools Conference- The Sunderland Climate Friendly Schools Conference, held at City Hall, attracted over 100 attendees - mostly pupils from primary, secondary schools across the city to take part in climate activity. Schools working to achieve Climate Friendly School Status showcased their projects including food growing, uniform swaps, energy saving and supporting walking and cycling. 

Together with partners including Active Sunderland and Together for Children, Holiday Family Events are currently being held across the City this summer, team member will be speaking to communities about how to be more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprint and delivering fun sustainability activities. 

At each of these events, team members have offered information and advice on issues such as energy efficiency, active transport, the Betterpoints app and Refill Sunderland as well as offering fun activities such as planting edible seedlings and supporting residents to make climate pledges. 

In 2023 this included; 

Common Purpose - This programme brought together 50, 18-25-year-olds who live, work or study in the city, to help make it a cleaner, greener city for future generations. 

Together with partners including Together For Children and Active Sunderland, 15 Holiday Family Events were held across the City, speaking to communities about how to be more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprint and delivering fun sustainability activities. 

In October the second Sunderland EcoFest was held and was split into 2 parts (businesses and residents). The Business event was held at City Hall and was attended by 14 businesses. 5 seminars were held and included a range of speakers.  

The residents event was held at the Museum & Winter Gardens and had 10 exhibitors. Activities included making an Elmer the Elephant from recycled milk bottles, planting seeds, mat making, windmill making, lantern making and plant a pledge.
  
Other events have included Family Pride, the International Triathlon and Freshers Week at Sunderland University. 

Non-profit organisation, Common Purpose, who work in over 200 cities globally, delivered the third Sunderland 60 Legacy programme in April 2024. 

The Sunderland 60 Legacy project brought together 18-25 year olds from a range of employers and education providers across the city to take part in an international leadership programme. Their focus was learning and developing ideas on how to make Sunderland a cleaner, greener city for generations to come.  

Young people were invited to participate from organisations including Together for Children, Sunderland Care & Support, Gentoo, Sunderland College, the University of Sunderland and Sunderland City Council. Some of of whom sponsored the programme, alongside businesses Arctic Wolf and Ashmore Consultants. 

Over four days the participants received training and sessions from Common Purpose as well as experts in related fields locally. They then presented their own ideas to senior representatives on how they would recommend reducing carbon footprints and helping the city achieve its low carbon ambitions - these resulted in 6 strong proposals for Sunderland, which are now being considered. 

Non-profit information Common Purpose, who work in over 200 cities globally, delivered the Sunderland 60 Legacy programme in June 2022. 

Two of the young people attended the city's next 2030 Shadow Board to share their experience and the proposed ideas they had developed with city leaders. 

The second Sunderland 60 event took place in April 2023 and saw 55 young people from organisations in Sunderland meet for 3 days. Participants took part in 4 immersion visits before developing their ideas to make Sunderland a cleaner and greener city. 

The Business Renewables Energy Efficiency Sunderland (BREEZ) project finished in June 2023. As at the end of the project, over 300 businesses and community groups had been contacted and advised, 83 SMEs were fully engaged (including audits, advice and guidance). 74 BREEZ grants totalling £532,449 were allocated and, with 50% match funding attracted from SMEs and Community Groups, the total value of energy efficiency measures installed was £1,249,334. BREEZ 2 is in development to continue supporting businesses and community groups to install energy efficiency measures.

Sunderland was part of the regional Business Energy Saving Team (BEST) which ran until March 2022. BEST was a project funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and delivered by local authorities in North East England. The BEST team provided businesses with a full energy audit, designed to help identify ways to save energy, money, and carbon emissions. If businesses met certain criteria the BEST team could also provide a grant to partially support the upfront costs of energy efficiency measures. As of the end of BEST programme in March 2022, Sunderland City Council led the regional performance table, with 21 approvals, 14 grants claimed, and a total project value of £130,000 invested in energy efficiency improvements saving 327 tonnes of carbon equivalent. Updated information for Sunderland businesses will be provided for the full project period shortly. 

The Council has commenced the ECO4 project in partnership with EON and Utilita to insulate properties and upgrade old and inefficient heating systems. This builds on the success of the earlier ECO3/Flex project (January 2021 - April 2022) which saw the Council assist 357 households, with a total value of £704,987 for gas boiler upgrades and insulation measures. 

Through the LAD 2 project 225 low-income low-efficiency domestic properties have benefited from 455 energy efficiency measures to help cut energy bills and carbon emissions.  Following a 'Fabric First' whole house insulation approach, qualifying properties have also benefited from Low Carbon heat-pumps and / or solar roof panels.  Total cost £1,664,095. Improvements include:  

- Solar Roof Panels  

- Room in Roof (Attic) Insulation 
 
- Top Up Loft Insulation to 300mm 

- Cavity Wall Insulation 

- Solid Wall Insulation  

- Underfloor Insulation (Ground Floor only) 

- Air Source Heat Pump (Low Carbon High Efficiency Heating) 

- Heating Control upgrades

The Council, working in partnership with Groundwork North East and the Citizens Advice Bureau, have secured £1.2m of funding from National Grid Warm Homes Fund to replace old, inefficient electric storage heaters with Air Source Heat Pumps in 135 private sector, low-income homes.   

The Warm Homes Fund project also provides energy saving and income maximisation advice to homeowners and tenants of private landlords: 

- the installation of affordable heating solutions in fuel poor households which don't use mains gas as their primary source of heat. 

- activities to support people with health conditions living in fuel poor households, particularly in urban areas with a high Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) ranking and with high concentrations of fuel poverty. 

In partnership with Gentoo, the project will target decarbonisation upgrading works to over 500 social rented homes located across Sunderland. £2.4 million has been invested into the scheme, with half of the programme being funded through the government bid. 

 The worst properties in terms of Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) bands are to be prioritised and works undertaken must result in achieving a minimum of EPC Band C rating. Measures include loft insulation, a combination of loft and window upgrades and fabric enhancements, such as external wall insulation and flat roof upgrades. The development of the project draws on comprehensive work which has been undertaken by Gentoo to review energy data across its housing stock as part of the ongoing development and delivery of its corporate strategy.  


In July 2022, as part of the Social Housing Decarbonisation fund, work has recently started to improve the energy efficiency of 21 properties in Whinfell, Albany. 

The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) Phase 1 scheme is delivered by Salix Finance and funds capital energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation projects. Projects must be within public sector non-domestic buildings, including central government departments and arm's length bodies in England. After a successful £1.7million bid to the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS), Sunderland City Council completed works to decarbonise 7 municipal buildings through PSDS Wave 1 in summer 2022. This included Bunny Hill, Evolve, Farmborough Court, Houghton Library, Thorney Close Action and Enterprise Centre, Austin House and Ryhope Customer Service Centre.

The project saved an estimated 1,754MWh and 375 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year.

The City Council was allocated £2.6 million for solar PV and battery storage works – through the Sunderland Energy Storage and Efficiency Project (SESEP) which was part-funded through the European Regional development Fund (ERDF) – across a range of Council operational premises. Through SESEP, the Council installed solar and battery storage at its business centres (Evolve, Sunderland Software Centre and Washington Business Centre) as well as Bunny Hill, St Mary’s and Riverside Multi-Storey Car Parks and Transit Shed 7 at the Port of Sunderland.

The EV Hub programme, valued at £2.94 million, seen work conducted at Jack Crawford House and Parsons Depot. The work included solar PV, battery storage, EV charging and an electric refuse vehicle. The energy generated by the solar PV will be stored in batteries and used to supply Electric Fleet Vehicles.

Parsons Depot will annually generate ‍365,905kWh of green energy, offsetting 171,928kg of carbon emissions. The is the carbon reduction equivalent to planting 10,424 trees grown over 10 years.

Over the last 5 years, the Council has replaced over 48,000 streetlights across the city with LED lighting. Since the start of the project in November 2016, this has reduced annual energy consumption from streetlighting by over 20,000MWh, and delivered annual carbon savings of 5,370 tonnes. In addition to the street lighting replacement scheme, the Council has also delivered LED lighting to street lit signs in 2022/23. Further LED lighting upgrades to parks, associated buildings and traffic signals are ongoing and will deliver additional carbon and energy savings.

Following a successful bid in January 2022, the Council participated in the ‘Local Climate Engagement’ (LCE) programme, which is a partnership with Involve, the Democratic Society, Shared Future and Climate Outreach. The LCE programme is working with local authorities to deliver high-quality climate change public engagement projects in a way that benefits both the local authorities and their communities. Sunderland was one of 21 local authorities selected across the two LCE programmes from 75 applications and one of only 5 authorities to be offered the opportunity for in-depth project support for which it applied. Sunderland’s project focussed on public engagement around sustainable travel behaviours. The project provided training to approximately 20 Council and Together for Children colleagues, some virtually and some in person from a range of services areas. Participants formed 3 focused teams and planned engagement on three separate projects including social prescribing for active travel (which is partly funded by the Healthy Cities Grant), cycleway design at Dame Dorothy Street to support the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) and home to school transport for SEND children and young people.

In autumn 2021 Sunderland City Council launched and funded COP26 Sunderland school grants which saw 6 secondary schools and 2 primary schools design and deliver a range of carbon-cutting initiatives to get involved in COP26. Schools across the city were asked to submit applications to drive forward local environmental change, and as part of this grant these projects focused on those most likely to be impacted by climate change, the city's children and young people. 

Grants totalling £2,600 were awarded to teachers, children and young people from Albany Village Primary School, Broadway Junior School, Kepier Academy, Monkwearmouth Academy, Southmoor Academy, Sandhill View Academy, St. Aidan's Catholic Academy and Washington Academy. These schools delivered projects which included planting trees and developing school gardens, creating orchards, harvesting willow, improving recycling, litter picking and reducing single-use plastics as well as setting up school eco teams.

In January 2023 the Council's Deputy Leader (and portfolio holder for Low Carbon) graduated from UK100's Climate Leadership Academy for councillors. The Academy, which took place between September 2022 and January 2023, offered ambitious elected representatives in a leadership position a unique coaching opportunity to develop their political skills, knowledge and confidence, to become leading climate pioneers in local government. Participants in the programme worked on how to overcome the challenges in designing and delivering ambitious, local climate projects, to enable progress towards their council's Net Zero goals.

Sunderland City Council has (in partnership with German twin town Essen) secured funding from North Rhine Westphalia and Stadt Essen and financially supported the 'Citizens' Low Carbon Innovation for Mutual Action in Twin CitiEs' (CLIMATE) project. This brought together groups of young people from Sunderland College (students in Travel and Tourism as well as Green Ambassadors) to work with counterparts in Essen's Theodore Heuss Gymnasium. 

Early work was delivered online, including joint virtual sessions of both groups of learners, a webinar and joint project work. The project was completed in June 2022 with a visit of the Sunderland group, travelling sustainably overland, to Germany. Whilst in Essen they spent time working with their German partners, including meeting with the European Green Capital Agency, a reception at the Town Hall, visiting the THG school, exploring local sustainable sites in Essen including an energy exhibition, and joint student-led project work.