We donate our time, skills and money to community initiatives 

In addition to the benefits our business and services bring to the local communities, we also donate our time, skills and money to local community projects. We often work collaboratively with other local businesses, helping to build and strengthen relationships to make a real difference in the most effective way.

Our employee volunteering scheme encourages our employees to use their skills, experience and resources to support their local communities. They can get involved in one-off volunteering projects or longer-term initiatives such as mentoring and helping young people to improve their literacy and numeracy skills. In 2011, we will underline our commitment to investing in our local communities by introducing a new Group-wide volunteering policy.

Our programme benefits not only the community, but also our employees and the whole business. It gives our employees the opportunity to use existing skills and develop new skills outside their working environment. By making a meaningful contribution to their local communities it helps to improve their morale, motivating them and increasing our employee retention rate. It also demonstrates our local engagement and support, enhancing our reputation, which can help with the recruitment of potential new employees.

We use the London Benchmarking Group methodology to capture information about our community investment and to put a monetary value on our contribution. As the Group is made up of a wide range of geographically spread operations, the extent of our data capture is limited. In 2010, we estimate that our total community investment was £1.65m (2009: £1.4m) based on data captured from approximately 60% of the Group.