Welcome

A welcome from Chief Executive, Pete Richmond

Thanks for your interest in becoming our Director of Investment and Growth. It's a really important appointment for Bournville Village Trust.

George Cadbury founded Bournville on a simple conviction: that the quality of the places people live shapes the lives they can lead. More than 125 years later, we still hold homes, land, buildings and whole neighbourhoods in trust, and we still think in generations rather than years. That's unusual, and it's what makes working here different.

Let me be honest about how we reached this point. We advertised the role last year and, after careful thought, chose not to appoint. The process wasn’t wasted. It forced us to understand our assets and our ambitions far better, and we return with a clearer role and a stronger platform beneath it.

If you’re offered and accept this job, you won't be starting from scratch. We have a 30-year housing investment plan, a five-year detailed programme, an emerging route to EPC C and a much better view of how our wider assets perform. You'd inherit capable managers, improving data and plans already in motion. Leading that work well, with strategic direction, assurance and reliable delivery, is the heart of the job and matters a lot to us.

But it's only the starting point. The reason this role exists is growth.

Let me be equally transparent about money. Our strategic review has directed us to strengthen our long-term financial capacity. We can fund our responsibilities to the assets we hold, but we don't have a large reserve of uncommitted capital for a conventional growth programme. Growth has to come from what we already own, and from how well we use our land, our commercial activity and our partnerships. That's a constraint, and it’s also where our opportunity lies.

Development is central, and I wouldn't want you to underestimate it. Our land along Birmingham's A38 is one of the largest opportunities in our recent history. Celebration Bournville, the reimagining of our village centre, is a flagship in its own right. Behind both sits a real pipeline of smaller sites. Done with skill and patience, development is how we shape places and fund everything else.

Our rural and agricultural estate matters too: some 2,500 acres of Green Belt and tenanted farms on Birmingham's edge. It asks a lot of us as stewards, and it holds real value in how the land is farmed and let, in natural capital and environmental markets, and in the places it supports. Alongside it, our commercial and market-rent estate and the wider economic life of Bournville are central both to our income and to the neighbourhoods we look after.

Here at BVT, we're not interested in growth for its own sake. We want someone who can carry commercial judgement and charitable purpose at the same time, turn opportunity into propositions that stand up financially, judge where BVT should lead and where it should not, and build the relationships that make ambition real. This is not a conventional housing role, nor purely a development one. It brings together asset management, capital investment, development, commercial operations and rural stewardship in a way few other posts do.

This is a senior role working at the heart of BVT's leadership, alongside the Executive Team and our Board and Trustees. You'll be offering clear advice and sound judgement as we make some difficult and important choices about our future.

Roles that combine this kind of commercial weight with this depth of purpose are rare. If that's what you're looking for, I hope you'll apply.

Pete Richmond

Chief Executive, Bournville Village Trust