Community projects receive £33,000 boost from Bessy Bell wind farm

GRANTS totalling than £33,000 has been awarded to community groups located around a wind farm on Bessy Bell mountain near Newtownstewart.

This brings the total amount awarded in this part of Tyrone to almost £350,000 since the SSE Renewables Bessy Bell 2 Community Fund was launched in 2009, helping schools, sports clubs and community centres to power local change. As part of the latest round of funding, Drumlegagh Community Group received £2,022 of funding from SSE to transform an unused public space into a community garden by installing a polytunnel with workbench and raised planting beds.

Mona Allen, chair of Drumlegagh Community Group, said, “This will have a beneficial impact on the local community, by enabling us to grow our own flowers for planters at considerable savings compared to buying commercially grown plants.

“We will also be able to grow fruit and vegetables to share with residents, which will help the village to become more self-sustainable and be beneficial to local people in the current ‘cost-of-living’ crisis.”

This year’s fund brings a change to how the Community Fund is being distributed. Due to the increasing level of demand for projects in the community, SSE Renewables has taken the decision to start awarding funding from the Bessy Bell 2 Community Fund every two years, rather than every year, to maximise funding opportunities.

This means this latest round of SSE’s community investment from Bessy Bell 2 is from funds for 2023 and 2024, bringing the total combined two-year fund being distributed this year to local groups to £33,000.

This year’s biennial fund is supporting 25 groups who were each successful in securing a grant from the Bessy Bell 2 Community Fund. The Bessy Bell 2 Wind Farm has a generation capacity of 9MW; enough generation capacity to be capable of powering almost 8,000 homes in Northern Ireland with clean, green energy every year.