Estate Signs Up to The Prince’s Foundation’s Principles of Responsible Home Building
Jul 25, 2018
Blenheim Estate is joining forces with other large estates to champion the need for responsible housing development.
The Oxfordshire Estate is applying the principles created by The Prince’s Foundation, which state that landowners have a moral and social responsibility to build new homes that their communities actually want and that landowners can do this best by exercising control over how their land is developed.
In its ‘Building a Legacy – A Landowner’s Guide to Popular Development’ the Foundation reports: ‘With the right advice, commitment and resale values, the landowner has the choice of rejecting normal development models and ensuring their legacy is one of good stewardship, land husbandry and a moral concern for the quality of life for future generations’.
“The government has stated that nationally we need to be building 300,000 new homes annually for the foreseeable future in order to address the growing housing crisis and Oxfordshire in particular is suffering from a severe under delivery in recent years,” said Roger File, Chief Operating Officer and Property Director for Blenheim Estate.
“As an organisation we are fortunate enough to be in the unique position of having access to land suitable for development as well as both the experience and the expertise to develop and build high quality homes and communities,”
“Unlike many commercial property developers, we are inextricably linked to our local communities and we have a strong sense of responsibility for the socio-economic and aesthetic wellbeing of the area.
“We want to be able to share best practice, enhance our local communities and create developments we can be proud of and that people want to live in,” he added.
Building a Legacy makes the case that it’s not enough to just be building new homes but to be building new places that communities actually want.
Blenheim Estate is currently developing with Partners Pye Homes 300 houses on a site to the east of the historic town of Woodstock, where it will be applying the Foundation’s Building a Legacy principles to ensure housing is of the right quality and popular locally.
“Our housing and other development initiatives pre-date the drawing up of our 10 year goals but they are a crucial element in its success,” said Roger.
“They will help us meet the challenges we have set ourselves including our Affordable Housing delivery, Restoration of the World Heritage Site as well as creating an Endowment to ensure its long term sustainability and, to some extent, our Charitable goals,” he added.
