Barratt, the UK’s largest house building company, will be building England’s first eco-village according to Yvette Cooper, the UK’s housing and planning minister.

Barratt has won the contract to built the eco-friendly community at Hanham Hall near Bristol. It is expected that the work will take three years to complete ensuring it is finished well ahead of the UK Government’s 2016 target of having all new homes being carbon neutral.

To achieve it’s environmentally friendly status, a biomass combined heat and power plant will operate onsite and will provide energy to the entire 200-home complex. There will also be a rainwater capture system, along with farmers’ shops, a car club and plenty of bicycle storage areas.

The UK Government already has plans for 10 eco-towns with 20,000 homes between them. It is hoped that smaller eco-villages will also be build to aid town development. The next eco-town will be built in Peterborough, although decisions as to who the contract goes t have not yet been made. Wigan and Doncaster will also be housing new eco-towns in the near future.

It is not the first time that Barratt have dabbled in eco-friendly homes – last year, the company opened an eco-smart show-village in Lancashire that showed off small-scale renewable technologies such as personal roof-top wind turbines and combined heat and mass power plants.

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