Sustainability at North Cottage Cromer – and our actions on regenerative tourism

“We believe the most sustainable property is the one that already exists – we are working with a passion to conserve our historic home and leave its precious setting in a better condition than we found it”.

Sustainable travel, at its simplest, means doing no harm. Regenerative tourism asks more: leave a place better than you found it – the ecosystem, the community, the heritage. We’re working on all three of these.

In May 2025 North Cottage Cromer was awarded Carbon Charter Accreditation (audited by Groundwork East with support from North Norfolk District Council). It’s a measured assessment of our actual gas, electricity and water use, and sets us targets to monitor and reduce our environmental impact.

At a glance here’s what we’re doing:
ecosystem:

• Carbon Charter Bronze (May 2025) – independently audited.
• 100% renewable electricity (since 2025), on a smart meter and app.
• LED lighting throughout, A rated energy efficient appliances installed using repairable long life brands – Liebherr, Miele, Sony.
• Zoned, app-controlled, energy efficient gas central heating (since February 2023) across 16 rooms, part-funded by an Airbnb sustainability grant. Energy efficient gas boiler installed (March 2024).
• Water meter, secondary meters at the garden taps and water butts – rainwater is used for the garden before mains water.
• Nature friendly biodiverse gardens – created and lovingly maintained by us.
• Encouraging a car-free Cromer stay – promoting walking and public transport options including train and bus travel.

The community

• Local trades always employed – Norfolk tradespeople carry out all conservation, repairs and regular servicing – from windows and chimneys to sanding floors and installing heating systems, every job is done by someone who earns their living in the local area.
• Cleaning team paid well above Living Wage (higher than the minimum wage) with paid breaks. They are valued members of our business and in North Norfolk 31% of workers earn a living directly from tourism (source: North Norfolk District Council 2024).
• Local attractions and businesses highlighted for our guests on our website, in our emails, and personally at check-in.
• Donating surplus duvets to local animal rescue charity – for re-use as animal bedding

Heritage

• We are lovingly conserving a house with a history. We have researched its story from its beginnings right up to today – it delights our guests and brings this home to life.
• Conservation and restoration always is our guide – not replace or renew. Original floorboards sanded, chimneys rebuilt brick by reclaimed brick, walls repointed, original Victorian sash windows refurbished, garage doors restored at a tenth of the cost of installing new, conservatory roof made energy efficient.
• Vintage, pre-loved, re-homed furnishings always favoured over mass produced, disposable short-life items.
• Preserving our place in history – North Cottage sits inside the Cromer conservation area and an historic park created and secured for the people of Cromer and its visitors almost a century ago in 1929. We are working to protect the park for future generations.

These aren’t just future plans – read all about what we’re doing now

Energy and carbon

Gas heating

Gas heating is the biggest contributor to our carbon footprint. There is some good news – since gaining our Carbon Charter we reduced gas use by 4.17%. A house our size should use around 32,500 kWh per year but our consumption over the year dropped by 1,000 kWh to 23,000 kWh.

North Cottage is an historic Victorian building, so we’ve worked hard on being smart with our gas use. We can’t turn the heating off when the building is quiet in winter – the entire house is heated 24/7 to 12C. This is a real energy eater – but it’s essential to stop the building becoming damp. Over the winter in 2025/6 we used an AI generated heating schedule to boost the heating 4 times a day to maintain the 12c target temperature instead of setting the heating constantly on. This AI modelled schedule has helped produce an energy saving.

When the house is occupied during winter every room has its own heating zone, with smart thermostats fitted to every radiator. We installed this system in 2023 with help from an Airbnb sustainability grant and then we followed up by investing in a new energy-efficient, future proofed boiler in 2024. We can also control the heating and hot water remotely to optimise savings and keep our guests comfortable.

In summary – this year we reduced gas consumption by 4.17% kWh and next year we’ll be trying for a further reduction.

Electricity

Electricity – Consumption from June 2024 – 2025 was 2,018 kWh, our smart meter data for June 2025-2026 shows electricity use has dipped very slightly to 2,000 kWh. This year the difference is all of our electricity has come from Octopus’s renewable tariff saving 420kg of CO2 emissions – equivalent to planting 210 trees. Switching to a renewables tariff was one of our Carbon Charter goals and we’re pleased to report a positive outcome.

Ofgem categorises 6 bedroom houses as high use homes, with an average use of 4,500kWh per year equating to around 2.5 kWh per occupant per day. Our guest use averaged 2.61 kWh per day but after adjusting by 15% for unoccupied winter periods (when some appliances still run) this drops to 2.22 kWh per guest night.

The reasons our electricity use is lower than average is as a result of our energy saving actions – we have installed LED lighting throughout North Cottage, some on motion sensors so they turn off when the room is empty. Our A rated appliances are energy efficient too. In 2025 we even replaced all our Miele vacuum cleaners with their updated energy saving models. We do all our laundry on site, so our linen doesn’t travel, and we line-dry whenever the weather allows, so the tumble dryer sits idle. We’re also actively reducing laundry loads to save electricity and water by encouraging guests to use fewer towels and letting guests choose to use extra pillows to save laundering, drying and ironing pillow cases.

Over the next 12 months we’ll be watching all our energy data closely looking for further savings wherever we can find them.

TIP: Help us if you can: keep doors and windows shut when the heating’s on, turn lights off when you leave a room, and reach for a blanket from the wardrobe before the thermostat.

Water conservation

Norfolk is the driest county in England with on average between 600mm – 780mm (24 – 31 inches) of rainfall a year – so we treat water as the scarce resource it is. In the last year we’ve reduced water use by 18%.

As a result of installing water saving devices on showers, reducing laundry loads, and installing water butts we have reduced our water use by 28,000 litres – enough tap water to fill all 4 of our 210 litre water butts 33 times over.

The Consumer Council for Water says average domestic use is 140 litres per head per day. Our data shows guest use at 170 litres per head, but once we remove the considerable amount of water we use for laundry this drops to 159 litres. That’s still above the 140 litres per head (Consumer Council for Water) used in an average UK home so we still need to identify a further 12% saving. This is particularly vital in East Anglia, one of the UK’s most water-stressed regions, proving that luxury tourism and aggressive conservation can work hand-in-hand. We’re working on this in 2026 – which is proving already to be an exceptionally hot and dry year.

We can all help reduce water use. For example, surprisingly a dishwasher uses less water than hand washing dishes. Our dishwasher uses 10 litres a cycle for fourteen place settings; while washing the same amount in a bowl uses around 16 litres, and under a running tap can use 9 litres a minute (source: Neff and the Energy Saving Trust).

TIP: Help us if you can: take showers instead of baths, turn taps off while brushing teeth, and use the dishwasher.

Waste

We send as little to land-fill as possible. For the last two years we’ve donated surplus duvets to the local animal rescue centre for re-use as animal bedding, we wrote about this here (we also encourage our guests to visit the Hillside Shire Horse Sanctuary at West Runton near Cromer). We also donated surplus furniture, no longer required, to the Sue Ryder charity shop Cromer for resale (Sue Ryder is a national charity providing end of life and palliative care). We have also purchased items here including vintage bedside cabinets.

We ask guests to separate glass bottles from waste and we take them to a bottle bank that raises funds for a nearby village. We’ve been less successful with recycling everyday household waste. Every recycling bin we’ve tried gets contaminated during every stay, and sorting the mixed waste by hand isn’t a job either of us enjoys and on a busy changeover we don’t have the resources to do it. For now we point guests to the recycling banks near the pier. By March 2027, when all properties must have recycling and food waste collections we’ll be ready, we’re not alone in finding this a challenge – even North Norfolk District Council has delayed its compulsory food waste collections until 2027.

Cleaning

We supervise and help with all the cleaning personally. When appropriate we use natural products, soap, vinegar, salt and soda crystals over branded chemicals. We avoid harsh or unnecessary chemicals – like fabric softeners that can harm the environment. We buy large packs to reduce packaging waste and we always re-fill washing–up liquid and soap containers.

TIP: Please help us recycle and reduce waste whenever you can. Choose items with less packaging.

Trevor and Morgan reglazed the Conservatory with energy efficient glass in 2026. Matthew and Mark refurbished the timber garage doors in 2025. Andy rebuilt both chimneys with reclaimed bricks in 2023 and 2024.

Heritage

This is one of the achievements which means the most to us, because it goes to the very heart of what regenerative tourism is about and its one of the reasons we bought our historic house. North Cottage Cromer sits inside Cromer’s Conservation Area, it was originally built for the Headmaster of the 19th Century Cromer Free School for boys and then became part of a privately owned estate. For the seven years we’ve owned it (since 2018) we’ve chosen the slow, skilled, expensive route over the quick fix every time the building has needed maintenance. Our goal is to leave the property, and the park just outside its gates (the former estate) in a better condition than when we arrived.

Preserving and Conserving North Cottage

We’ve directly reinvested the guest income back into preserving (re-using the original materials – reglazing the original timber window frames, reusing the bricks from the crumbling chimneys) and conserving (protecting the original building as much as possible – sanding floorboards, repairing timber) as much of the original house as possible.

Early in the year after we arrived, in March 2019 The Floor Sanding Company in Norwich revealed the original Victorian floorboards in many of the rooms rather than us hiding them under a carpet made of chemicals. In 2021 the original Victorian sash windows were taken out stripped down and refurbished, and then fitted with energy efficient double glazed units, rather than ripped out and replaced with new windows. This was a two-year project with the Sash Window Preservation Company of Norwich, done in stages so we could host guests throughout and fund the work. In 2023 we discovered both chimneys were crumbling so badly they were in need of rebuilding. We could have used new bricks and modern pots but we commissioned lime mortar specialist and conservator Andy O’Brien of A.O.Services in Cromer to clean and re-lay every original brick in traditional lime mortar, one brick course at a time and we scoured reclaim yards for four original Victorian chimney pots – and to ours and Andy’s amazement found some in Cromer! In April 2024 RG Leverett Roofing of Norwich renewed the rain gulley flat roofs to prevent damp entering the building. In September 2025 a North Walsham firm, MP Property Maintenance, restored our twenty-year-old garage doors, with Matthew and Mark saving as much of the original timber as they could, for roughly a tenth of the cost – and all the embodied carbon – of simply fitting new doors.

In June 2026, Trevor Joyce and Morgan of Town and Country Glass re-glazed the thirty-year-old hardwood conservatory roof with modern, thermally efficient, UV-protective panels – seventeen uniquely angled pieces of glass, fitted like an expensive jigsaw puzzle. The timber frame itself, over three decades old, needed nothing at all, which says a fair amount about how well it was built the first time. That’s the standard of work we’ve set ourselves too.

None of this is cheap, and none of it is the easy route. It’s funded directly by bookings, so every guest staying here is helping to keep a piece of Cromer’s history standing. A neighbouring historic property has fallen into complete disrepair and is uninhabitable; we’ve prevented North Cottage from suffering the same fate.

The trades we selected to carry out this preservation and conservation are all working here in Norfolk. Their jobs are all Norfolk jobs. It is another contribution we make, and our guests make, to the circular economy. In Norfolk tourism spend generates £.3.6 billion annually and other sectors including building are sustained by the health of the tourist sector.

TIP: Read our full history of the house and discover how your stay is helping to conserve it for future generations.

Exotic sensory garden created on the site of the former chicken coop and compost area in 2019

Biodiversity

The gardens do real work for regenerative and sustainable tourism too – we’ve loved creating them. The year after we arrived, during the summer of 2019, we transformed a former chicken coop and compost heap into an exotic sensory garden – and we’ve loved watching it evolve into the burst of exotic energy it is today. Gardening is for the patient, and for the long term. These are all plants that weren’t here before we arrived, some of which we’ve propagated ourselves – like the Fatsia Japonica, the Arum Lillies and the Ophiopogon Nigrescens. We’ve carried the same process throughout the garden.

The native, seasonal, perennial and exotic planting brings in insects – bees, butterflies, moths as well as a wide variety of bird life. We love spotting all the varieties and discovering their song and calls (using the Merlin app) from blackbirds, robins, blue tits, up to larger birds including the occasional sparrow hawk, pheasant and Peregrines. After dark pipistrelle bats can be seen flitting through the gardens and driveway, and another after dark visitor we were delighted to discover are hedgehogs – confirmed by using Google Lens to identify their droppings on the lawn. We even get the occasional Muntjac (a type of small deer) hopping over the wall – and we hope they enjoyed our strawberries the last few years because they got there before one ever made our mouths.

We keep hard surfaces to a minimum in favour of grass, mulch and gravel, which water drains through rather than runs off. Where there are existing har surfaces, for example the slate paved courtyard we’ve introduced planters. We make our own compost (we added two extra compost bins in 2025), propagate our own plants, and mulch all the flower beds which cuts down on both watering and weeding.

Indoors, the conservatory’s exotic houseplants are slowly colonising the rest of the house, bringing an added sense of calm and tranquility and helping all our guests spend time a bit closer to the natural environment.

TIP: Play our garden spotting game – enjoy spotting all the animals, birds, and insects that live in the garden.
Look out for the spotting chart in the Garden Room – it’s with the games.

Historic North Lodge Park is right outside, Grade II Listed Cromer Pier is just steps away, Old Vicarage, East Ruston is a favourite visit

Community

Around 20% of jobs in Norfolk and 30% of jobs in North Norfolk depend on tourism, so where we spend money, we spend it locally – shops, trades, suppliers. Our cleaning team is paid above the Living Wage (higher than the minimum wage) with paid breaks, not just the legal minimum. We visit Norfolk’s attractions ourselves and recommend them to our guests in emails, in person and via our website blogs. We’ve written about our visit to each of these local attractions – click the link to read more: East Ruston Old Vicarage Garden, Houghton Hall, The Pier and Pavilion Theatre, Cromer Museum, Hillside Shire Horse Animal Sanctuary and North Lodge Park right outside our gates.

TIP: Support as many of the local attractions as possible – some of them are free!

Getting here, and getting about

Most guests park their cars on our driveway on arrival and don’t move the car again until they leave – Cromer’s pubs, restaurants, shops and even the supermarkets are all walkable. Guests love their car-free Cromer holiday. For guests travelling further, the Greater Anglia line to Norwich and beyond runs modern, wi-fi-equipped trains with a strong punctuality record; the forty-five-minute journey is genuinely scenic, and a fair number of solo guests joining larger family groups choose the train over driving. Please let us know if you travelled to stay with us by train.

While you’re staying in Norfolk a single Sanders Coasthopper fare is £3 and covers a surprising amount of ground – handy after a long coastal walk, or for the £3 for the bus ride to Norwich.

TIP: Think train – book in advance for the lowest fares, travel the coast with no parking problem by Sanders Coasthopper bus.

Sustainable Holidays

Holidaying in Norfolk instead of flying abroad already makes a meaningful contribution to carbon reduction. If while you’re here you walk more than you drive, support the small businesses that keep North Norfolk running, and enjoy this historic house and its garden we’ll help protect this largely unspoilt National Landscape for the future. We’ll keep doing our part. Thank you for doing yours.