Should councils spend public money on community-owned energy projects?

The chamber's narrow 57% verdict for councils spending on community-owned energy projects flattens what was actually a fractured vote — and the fracture runs along gender, not age. Men voted for the idea by more than two to one; women tilted against it, roughly two in five in favour. That is a wider gulf than anything the age brackets produced.

By generation the picture is far gentler: every cohort under 65 landed somewhere between narrow and comfortable yes majorities, with the youngest voters (a small group) and the 35-44s most enthusiastic. Only the over-65s, admittedly few in number, dipped into net No, hinting at the usual caution among older voters about council spending commitments.

The result sits squarely inside the long-running tension over how local authorities should spend constrained budgets against statutory pressures like social care — a tension that here cuts by gender more sharply than it does by age, unusual for an energy question where generational splits over net zero usually dominate the story.

If community energy has a natural constituency on this evidence, it looks male and under 65 — a coalition thinner than the headline 57% suggests.