With a great estate comes great trust. Blenheim describes this responsibility as: “To share and protect this place for future generations, to enhance the lives of local people and to be the lifeblood of the local economy”.
The estate takes this trust very seriously and it underpins everything in the three parts of Blenheim’s business; Blenheim Palace, Blenheim Estate Homes and Blenheim Estate Land.
In 2017, Blenheim announced ten goals to deliver in the next ten years. These are:
- Triple the Estate’s economic contribution to the local area
- Train over 100 new apprentices
- Build high quality, affordable homes for 300 families
- Achieve annual paying visitor numbers in excess of 750,000
- Become a net generator of green energy
- Become one of the UK’s Top 100 employers
- Complete £40 million of vital restoration work
- Reacquire key works from the Palace’s lost collections
- Secure endowment of £45 million to conserve World Heritage Sites
- Double the charitable contributions to the community
The Estate has pledged that by 2027, it will become carbon neutral on scopes 1-3 of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) protocol across all operations by 2027 and, beyond that, to remove 230,000 tonnes CO2e from the atmosphere by 2050.
As a part of this pledge to become greener and combat climate change, over the past 12 months Blenheim has produced enough renewable energy to power 274 houses for a year. You can read more about Blenheim’s sustainability work here.
In August 2023 Blenheim successfully completed the first dredge of the Queen Pool in over 100 years. This work has returned the lake to its ideal depth of two metres.
The Queen Pool and the rest of the lake system is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and provides a vital habitat for a huge range of wildlife ranging from water voles and otters to bats and wading birds.
The removed silt was transported 5km from water to land to create a new landform over 16ha. Once it is dried out it will be seeded and returned to grassland.
