Corporate Social Responsibility at Wates Group

At Wates we are driven by our purpose of working together to inspire better ways of creating the places, communities and businesses of tomorrow.

 

Delivering social value is intrinsic to our purpose and our goals of being a progressive and responsible employer. By considering social value in our business decisions, including the way we employ staff, engage with communities and buy products and services, we can cultivate a more sustainable and inclusive society, and demonstrate that business done well can be a force for good.

Our approach to social value is rooted in our belief that how we do business, is as important as what we do. Our programmes and activities are focused on creating work and training opportunities; building sustainable communities through employment, skills and awareness, and advocacy of trade with the social enterprise sector.

Our investment in local communities across the Group focuses on three strategic themes, underpinning our purpose to create the places, communities and businesses of tomorrow:

Challenge Inequality

Encouraging our projects to provide employment for those people furthest from the workforce is one way that we can challenge inequality. People in these groups include care leavers, ex-offenders, ex-service personnel, the unemployed, people with disabilities and those with experience of homelessness. The real Living Wage, advocated by the Living Wage Foundation, is a voluntary and independently set pay rate that reflects the true cost of living. Wates wants to be a champion for the Living Wage to ensure that people are not trapped in working poverty. 

 

Inspire and Educate Young People

 

Partnership with the Children's Book Project

Last year we announced our partnership with Children’s Book Project, installing a pilot donation point in London on the hoarding of our Borough Yards development.

The initiative, which enables passers-by to deposit books their children have outgrown, has attracted thousands of donations from across London and is more vital than ever during the lockdown period.

 

 

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, most collection points across London have been closed, but ours at Borough Yards has remained open and has contributed to 38,000 books being delivered to children and babies in the last month.

Books have been cleaned, sorted and distributed via 83 separate organisations, alongside our own, including women’s refuges, foodbanks, community groups, nurseries and schools.

Gifting has taken place across 12 London boroughs (Barking & Dagenham, Brent, Ealing, Enfield, Hackney, Hammersmith & Fulham, Hillingdon, Newham, RBKC, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Westminster) and to a number of schools in Oxfordshire.

A quarter of disadvantaged UK children have access to fewer than 10 books, so we hope the project could eventually grow nationally to tackle this book gap and help develop literacy levels across the UK, following the pilot.