Compton Verney is managed to balance the artistic integrity of landscape design with an appreciation for nature and wildlife. Our park has been designated a Local Wildlife Site and initiatives to increase biodiversity have been core to our developments and improvements for many years.

These initiatives include

The creation of an eighty acre wildlife meadow.
Planting trees to create a wooded pasture and hedgerows and developing sensitive woodland management practices. Local populations of birds and moths have been surveyed and documented by volunteer experts. 
An ongoing programme of activities and activities for our visitors promote a connection to nature and develop skills for protecting widllife.
A source heat pump was installed in the lake in the 1990s.
A reed bed for treatment of sewage was installed in 2015.
Our waste parther has a ‘zero to landfill policy.
We have a low carbon energy supply.
We are sourcing electric garden machinery.
We manage the park organically.
Reducing energy consumption through fitting LED lighting.
Installing electric car charging points and bicycle racks to reduce the impact of visitor travel.
We are a member of Sustainability of Arts in the West Midlands and continue to monitor our use of resources as part of our Arts Council NPO requirements. (See Appendix One).

Compton Verney’s curation, both inside and out, continues to reflect the landscape.  Past exhibitions have included Whistler and Nature, The Lost Words, Creating the Countryside and Gainsborough’s Landscapes.  Self-sufficiency and taming of the landscape have been explored, for instance in The Fifties Allotment, Stanley Spencer and the English Garden, and Capability Brown and the Landscapes of Middle England.  Sustainability has been addressed on a practical level, for instance in The Clearing – an experiment in simple, off-grid living within the park.

We are a forward thinking, environmentally-aware organisation that fulfils our social responsibility and promotes an environmentally-friendly culture, striving for continuous improvement in areas of environmental interest. 
As a young organisation, we wish to reveal and share our environmental journey with our governors, staff, members and visitors, and to build on it by embedding best practice through the development of a sustainability framework.  This will cover the four broad areas described below.

Through environmental action we aim to:
·         Respond to the climate emergency recognised by the UK Parliament, Stratford District Council and others and enhance our reputation by sharing a strong environmental narrative
·         Provide opportunities for our visitors, young and old, to engage with, learn about and enjoy wildlife and landscape
·         Manage costs in order to strengthen financial resilience and re-invest into our work as a not-for-profit charity
·        Share a strong environmental narrative, as awareness of the climate change and biodiversity crisis intensifies
·         Meet or exceed all of the requirements of relevant environmental legislation and best practice
·         Consider our impact by collecting data to demonstrate this
·         Quantifying and monitoring benchmarking whilst responding and reducing accordingly

We plan to develop, articulate and communicate a clear vision for a shared ethos within our community, which includes eighty-five staff and over one hundred volunteers.  This will include increasing awareness of energy usage, environmental risks, procedures and best practice through training and articles within internal publications.  Measures to increase engagement, such as transparency of our environmental metrics through a physical display, will be considered by a newly-formed Green Committee.

We will ensure all of our plant and infrastructure is regularly maintained and serviced allowing it to perform at its most efficient.  We will continue to take the environment into account when replacing plant and infrastructure as we have done previously with our lake sourced heat pump and reed bed.  We will look carefully at the impact of our park and art gallery on the environment, and how this can be improved.  For instance, we will explore opportunities for further generation of renewable energy and carbon drawdown on site.  We will also look at setting a date for achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
We would like to consider a project to extend our biodiversity surveying work to include more flora and fauna.

We plan to tell the story of our environmental work to our visitors, putting our landscape and projects in context, perhaps through the creation of an Environment Centre.  We also plan to minimise visitor footprint, e.g. by eliminating disposables in the café.  In addition, we would like to provide a safe, creative space to allow artists and visitors to explore their responses to environmental challenges, and to engage in dialogue.  We envisage working with diverse artists using a co-production model.

We plan to develop clear protocols for selecting and working with suppliers, funders and contractors, for instance in relation to transportation of artwork.  We would like to have a clear awareness of our organisations’ embodied emissions, i.e. the footprint of our supply chain.  We will continue to work collaboratively with other relevant organisations, sharing our performance and experience with transparency.

Our schedule for environmental work includes the following regular tasks:
1.      Review the Environmental Policy (this document)
2.      Review the Environmental Action Plan
3.      Convene a Green Committee to meet at least quarterly in order to review and appraise environmental performance and evolve future plans
4.      Audit and review to ensure compliance to the policy and to any applicable laws and legislation
5.      Ensure all plant and infrastructure is regularly maintained and serviced allowing it to perform at its most efficient