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The Blenheim Estate contributes £175 million in economic benefits to the local community each year, provides year-round employment for 600 workers and supports a further 4,900 jobs.

Around 400 people have benefited from a social-prescribing initiative that uses access to nature to boost mental health and cut the use of prescription drugs.

And it鈥檚 not just people who are benefiting. In 2024, the 12,500-acre estate planted 270,000 trees that will boost biodiversity and help mitigate climate change.

It also generates a significant amount of renewable energy, with much more due to come online soon.

None of this has happened by chance.

The estate, which includes the 2,000-acre Blenheim Palace UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a purpose-driven organisation.

This purpose is driven by three core aspirations:

• To be the lifeblood of the local economy
• To enhance the lives of local people
• To share and protect the estate

Echoing my own long-held beliefs, Roy Cox, Managing Director of the Estate, believes that 鈥測ou cannot have a thriving landed estate without thriving local communities next to you鈥�.

Of course, having lofty aspirations is only part of the journey.

To really put purpose into practice, you need a detailed strategy, not to mention data, that covers all facets of an estate鈥檚 operations. And Blenheim certainly has that.

When it says it will be a carbon-neutral business by 2027, that also includes the Scope 3 emissions of the one million or so people who visit the estate each year.

Roy鈥檚 team has even gone so far as to calculate the estate鈥檚 share of the emissions attributable to its overseas visitors when travelling to the UK.

He鈥檚 also taken no chances when it comes to the hundreds of thousands of trees being planted on the estates.

The estate has a stake in two high-tech vertical tree nurseries that produce strong and climate-resilient saplings.

Some of the oak trees in the estate鈥檚 parkland are estimated to be over 1,000 years old.

It鈥檚 both a reminder of the long legacy that the UK鈥檚 landed estates are custodians of, and a clarion call to create new purpose-driven legacies that will last long into the future.

You can read the full conversation with Blenheim and other leading estates in the latest edition of The Rural Report: