The Church Commissioners’ approach to sustainability on their development land

The Commissioners partnered with English Rural in Shepherswell to deliver ten affordable homes and three market bungalows for older residents who wanted to downsize and remain in the community.

The Church Commissioners have been making a series of videos called Faith in our Future about their approach to sustainability across their land assets. The first two episodes looked at forestry and farmland, and the third focuses on their strategic development land.

It features interviews with staff members and some of the consultants involved in delivering their projects. They discuss the decision making process around where and how to bring forward development, and touch on what goes into the planning process. It’s important to them to meet real needs for housing and employment, in a way that is sensitive to the environment and creates places where people will want to live.

The video references the Coming Home report, and how it led to the Commissioners introducing an ESG framework for their strategic land portfolio, which continues to influence their approach. They put a high priority on landscape and nature, ensuring that development integrates with the environmental features and assets of a site, including protected species and places of high biodiversity. This is illustrated by visiting the new community of Finberry in Kent, a development the Commissioners began in 2013 and which will eventually have 1,180 homes – with a primary school, shops, a community centre, play parks and sports pitches.

The video concludes with a visit to Carpenters Yard, the Commissioners’ rural exception site in Shepherdswell, near Dover. They interviewed a resident of one of the 10 affordable homes who explained how they would have had to leave the village due to the rising cost of private rent, until English Rural Housing Association offered them one of the affordable homes in Carpenters Yard.

In response to the Coming Home report, the Commissioners have placed a higher priority on rural exception sites to provide affordable housing. Currently they are progressing 27 rural exception sites through planning in all parts of the country.