Over the last six years our charity, Gavin’s Mill Community Project, has restored and bought Gavin’s Mill, the old watermill at the centre of Milngavie. An empty, rundown, eyesore of a building has been transformed into a thriving community shop which sells fair trade, zero waste and ethically sourced products and a vegetarian café. This has been a massive project involving many helpers and volunteers from the local community who have given us their time and their cash, for which we will always be grateful.

But now having successfully negotiated the Covid pandemic, we are facing another crisis. A large old building like the Mill is expensive to heat and to run the services we require, and as a result our energy costs have risen nearly threefold. We have to find an additional £16,000 each year to cover these. Everything we do in the Mill uses energy: whether it’s cooking the much loved Gavin’s Mill scones and cakes, keeping the café cosy in winter, firing up all the IT needed to keep things running smoothly or just doing the washing up.