Our Core Pillars

 

Natural Environment & Climate Change

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Our natural environment underpins everything we do: the habitats within JHE and the species of flora and fauna that inhabit them, our  freshwater courses and bodies, soils, geology and weather form the JHE core.

  • JHE is a vast natural capital asset with immense downstream provision of public goods including carbon sequestration. From mountain top to river bed, our diversity of habitat and wildlife represents extraordinary opportunity and brings with it significant stewardship responsibilities.

  • JHE works to balance the industrial focus of Alvance and SIMEC, mitigating the wider environmental impact and investing in competent natural resource management and usage (including renewables) to meet our sustainability objectives.

  • Water is a basic human requirement and JHE acts as a collector, purifier and reservoir; our catchment impacts from the west coast to the east coast.

  • JHE is primarily a fragile upland environment. We will restore upland habitats including deep peatland, a crucial carbon sink, and heather moorland, rarer than rainforest; we will maintain and manage low-input grazing land, also an important carbon store, and carry out riparian and hill improvements including native tree planting.

  • We will manage sustainably our game, deer and fish populations as vital components of our natural capital stocks.

 

Community & Culture

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JHE seeks to elevate the Lochaber and Badenoch area by placing the wellbeing of local communities, both of geography and of interest, at its core. Our shared culture of opportunity, positivity and confidence has genuine potential to create change at an unprecedented scale in the Highlands.

  • The initial JHE community engagement project was one of the most extensive ever carried out in Scotland. This engagement is now constant and will continue to be carried out on this basis.

  • Storytelling is part of Highland culture: we engage in telling our own story, and we listen to the stories of others. Listening is at the heart of our culture.

  • We engage with communities to connect people and place, facilitate participation and rebuild the bond between livelihoods and landscape.

  • We are facilitating sustainable community endeavours to help people safeguard their own futures, as well as directly supporting future viability through our own innovative asset management.

 

Economic Enterprise

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JHE has the potential to be the economic powerhouse of Lochaber. We will take this opportunity and responsibility forward to share prosperity internally and externally.

• Our existing in-hand enterprises will be optimised, and new enterprises scoped, appraised and implemented.

• As part of our community support objectives, we will seek to work in partnership with local entrepreneurs, community groups, businesses, NGOs and other stakeholders to facilitate economic prosperity. Where opportunities exist on our own land, we will be an active and engaged partner rather than an arm’s length landlord; where opportunities exist on other land, we will support, guide and utilise our power for the greater good.

• In our own enterprises, we will seek to create permanent and seasonal employment opportunities and assist with housing provision for our staff.

• We will work with academic institutions and training bodies to facilitate rural skills and education.

 

The Built Environment

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JHE owns significant residential and commercial properties, plots and development sites in addition to recreation infrastructure. These properties provide JHE with the economic driving force of investment and economic regeneration.

• We will scope and implement a viable use for every current JHE building.

• Mindful of the imbalance in residential property supply and demand in Lochaber, we will work to optimise provision of let housing from our existing stock and new builds.

• Our commercial sites, both existing and planned, will be a significant facilitator of our communities’ business activities and interests and an important source of rental income for new JHE investment across our landholding.

• Heritage property is a major part of JHE’s built assets; we will safeguard these buildings for the present and future by carrying out sympathetic renovation and repurposing.

 

Recreation

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We are the geographic heart of the Outdoor Capital of the UK. With our own in-hand opportunities in addition to our tenants operating iconic outdoor recreation facilities including a ski centre, internationally-acclaimed mountain bike tracks, world-famous rock climbing and mountaineering routes – to name but a few – JHE is unrivalled in the provision of outdoor recreation.

  • JHE includes the North Face of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the UK.

  • The UCI Downhill Mountain Bike World Cup has taken place on Aonach Mor, part of JHE, since 2002.

  • We will improve our partnership working and collaboration with local access management groups and our landowning neighbours.

  • Our deer stalking takes place in a challenging and aesthetically stunning environment, with plans being formulated to improve publicity and offer a unique immersive game, deer and salmonid hunting experience.

  • On the famous “Road to the Isles”, there is major untapped potential in retaining visitors travelling en route to other parts of the Highlands and Islands: we should, and can, do much more.