“At Goscombe, we are on a mission to eradicate the need for any family to be without a secure and permanent place to live.

We need to recalibrate our thinking about property investment. Rather than seeing it as an asset giving rise to an infinite source of wealth accumulation, we must revalue homes as they were always intended – that is, as a place to lay down the roots of sustainable communities” Alistair Wickens, Founder, Goscombe Group

At Goscombe Group, we carefully balance our business’s economic, social, and environmental impacts to achieve our Mission. Here’s how…

Strong, resilient communities are the foundation of a healthy society.

Secure homes, meaningful livelihoods, opportunity creation, and networks of supportive relationships are the core components of a functioning community. But when communities break down; where homes are inaccessible, incomes do not cover costs, and people are priced out of their neighbourhoods; the fallout impacts us all. 

Access to affordable, sustainable homes, that allow people to remain in their communities are critical to our shared social welfare. 

Through our innovative Home² business model, we create high-quality affordable homes in a socially & financially sustainable way.

Goscombe Homes are manufactured using modern methods, built to last, economical to run, and healthy. Their construction and benefit are HyperLocal; and we redistribute our margin to our charitable partner, Trelis, to invest in community-strengthening initiatives. 

This is a new model for homebuilding. One that is socially, environmentally & financially sustainable, localised, modern, economical, and healthy, driven by a social purpose. 

Using HyperLocal supply chains has multiple benefits.

We reduce the impact of delays in the construction process, the primary cause for cost increases. We reduce transport congestion, minimising disturbance to the local area. Additionally, we reduce the environmental impact of home building due to the shorter journeys from local warehousing, to the local production facility, to the local community. 

Alongside the benefits mentioned above, HyperLocal supply chains drive local economic uplift through the use of local businesses to deliver key services. This means more local employment which, combined with the creation of direct jobs in the local warehouse & production facilities, and site-based roles lead to significant opportunity creation and new jobs in the local community. 

Finally, the Trelis apprenticeship programme means the skills needed for new jobs can be found and moulded in the local area, creating a reinforcing cycle. 

We are committed to building 4,648 new affordable homes in the next 10 years which produces:

• Over £1bn of Social and Economic value delivered across the local economic regions 
• £430m of Debt-free capital assets will be owned by Goscombe 
• 1500 ‘debt free’ social homes
• £40m invested into local communities, with a focus on the most disadvantaged
• £135m of aggregated value to local Authorities (capital receipts and LHA savings) 
• Carbon emissions which we will turn into a Net positive impact on the natural environment

Our HyperLocal focus on manufacturing means every £250,000 home created by Goscombe and installed locally will create an additional £302,000 of social and economic value in its first year, calculated against recognised industry metrics: 

• Number of direct and indirect jobs created by Goscombe 
• Employment of long-term unemployed or vulnerable individuals 
• Economic GVA to the SELEP (South East Local Enterprise Partnership) economy per job created 
• Economic value through local procurement with SME’s 
• Annual uplift in local spend by new residents 
• Additional Council Tax receipts 

Putting it another way; within 5 years, each Goscombe home will have contributed almost 3x its original value in social and economic value – a unique feature of the Goscombe proposition. 

As a business, we are committed to developing an environmental policy that has a NET positive impact on the natural environment.

The term Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) is still relatively new but generally refers to the use of a more efficient, off-site building technique that is not subject to the weather or normal on-site challenges. This means that the overall costs can be lower and deadlines can be met more consistently.  

MMC can also provide additional benefits over the more traditional build, by creating a build process that isn’t dependent on highly skilled trades, which in turn reduces the learning curve on training a workforce, whilst still ensuring quality standards equivalent or superior to a more traditional building method. 

Building properties within a production facility also gives the local supply chain stability, simplifies the procurement process, creates apprenticeship opportunities, and positively impacts the environment and sustainability.  

Compared to an equivalent, traditionally-built project, up to 67% less energy is required to produce a modular building.  Offsite construction also impacts the carbon footprint of a building, as it allows for a reduction of the total number of deliveries to sites by 90%.

Climate change, carbon offsetting, NET Zero; these terms can feel intangible and, for some, even overwhelming.

Yet, we are rightly advised that we each play our part in reducing harmful emissions, by living and operating more sustainably, and that it is only by working together that we can make the necessary global difference. 

Whether a government, a multi-national conglomerate, a global business, an SME, a local authority, a family, or an individual; our taking personal and corporate responsibility for our impact upon our planet is the nuts & bolts of bringing positive and lasting change to the environment. At Goscombe we take our responsibility to our planet seriously, by anchoring our efforts to reduce the negative impacts of homebuilding and our working toward a NET Zero footprint, locally, here in Sussex. 

By focusing our environmental responsibilities, reductions, and off-setting locally we believe that we can facilitate the connection between climate neutrality and climate positivity within ‘our’ local community. And by doing so our aim is to bridge the gap between the macro and micro, the global and the local, ‘our’ responsibility and ‘my’ responsibility.

For example, by partnering with Sussex based environmental Trusts and the South Downs National Park to join their ambitious Nature Recovery masterplan, bringing together a host of national and local bodies combining to mitigate climate change and improve local ‘green infrastructure’; or by investing into local offshore environmental initiatives to better utilise our coastal landscape, we can offset the emissions produced by building social and affordable homes where the NET benefit is tangible to our local community.  

Offsetting is important but we must also reduce our emissions and innovate our practice and to that end, we will commit to using less carbon to build our homes when compared to traditional build techniques (modular construction produces nearly six metric tons less carbon dioxide equivalents per 2,000 sq ft home compared to traditional construction), supported by our ability to source people and materials locally, and our ability to build the homes themselves in our factories close to where the homes will actually be deployed.

Our overriding target is to put twice as much back into the system than we take through our activities.  To do this, we will proactively manage a reduction in our carbon emissions.  And when we hand over a set of home keys, we will clearly state how much carbon has been emitted to produce that particular home.  Here’s how…

• We will, for example, plant enough trees within the local economic region to absorb the Carbon used to construct each home we create.  But we will go further by planting an equivalent number of additional trees to ensure we are a net positive contributor to the environment. 
• Our homes will therefore be designed to keep residents well below energy poverty limits – something which occurs when residents have to spend more than 10% of their net income on maintaining an adequate level of warmth.
• We will source renewable sources of energy to power our factories and deliver and install our homes.  Furthermore, all of our homes will be 100% electric, meaning more energy can be provided by renewable sources.