Tottington Manor
Tottington Manor, operated by Crown’s Venues Ltd, sits in the South Downs in West Sussex and is a venue, restaurant and hotel. They run various events, from weddings and anniversary parties to corporate meetings and yoga.
Our South East hub, the University of Brighton’s Green Growth Platform, helped them secure a grant to reduce their carbon footprint and energy bills through the Low Carbon Across the South and East scheme.
Delivering energy reductions across the venue
Steve Pomery, Co-owner, said:
“We put smart lighting system in across the hotel so that we could control the lighting at different times of the day, particularly at night-time. It’s more economical as it uses less power at that level, and it’s automatic. At night-time we have to keep lighting on all night long in common areas for staff and guests – we’ve reduced this lighting by about 40%.”
“We added smart thermostat valves to our radiators so that we can program them so it changes their set temperature at various times of the day. The third element was we eliminated gas in the kitchen. We switched over to induction hobs. They are electric and ultimately the hobs only ask for heat when they are being used. We also got rid of a few old freezers and fridges and swapped them for more economical ones. These are much more efficient.”
Accelerating sustainability projects
“The grant has allowed us to fast forward some of our sustainability projects. By getting the little ones under way, we can start to see the savings come in. We can use these savings to reinvest in future projects, it’s given us that boost to get us started. The savings we get will eventually make getting solar installation achievable. We have accelerated by a couple years in terms of where we would otherwise got to.”
Would you recommend LoCASE to other businesses?
“Absolutely. LoCASE helped us get started, I had to slim our project down to a starting point that enabled all these things to happen. Think about LoCASE as part of a bigger picture that fits in to what you’re trying to do.”