ESG – Belfield Group

Westbridge Supports Local Primary School

Ysgol Bryn Garth school has developed a nurture room to support vulnerable children to give them space, privacy, skills and support to help improve their self-esteem, happiness and confidence, which of course will help them now, but also later in life.

The importance behind nurture rooms is to provide a short-term focused intervention to deal with issues that are blocking learning for some children. Nurture rooms provide safe spaces for children who are struggling academically, or struggling with behaviour and isolation. To make the nurture room more welcoming, it is important to have the right decor to make the children feel calm, safe and comfortable.

Westbridge offered the school to choose from a selection of furniture and the chosen piece was duly collected and installed.

The school advised:

‘We started using the room on Monday, the children absolutely love it, and the staff are asking if they can visit it too!

Thank you so much again for your support and kindness, we really do appreciate it.’

Westbridge Support Homeless Charities – & Reduce Waste!

As part of our ongoing commitment to minimising our business’s impact on the environment, we encourage our staff to come up with innovative ideas and solutions to reduce waste, however it may arise.

Recently, staff at Westbridge were challenged with the problem of how to ethically dispose of over 800 mattress toppers after a change in customer requirements. Rather than let them go to landfill or become part of a textile recycling process which would consume further energy and resources, they contacted local charities and offered them, free of charge, to be used in a number of ways.

Here are some of the charities and end users that have benefitted from the initiative:

The Wallich is a homelessness charity in Wales. They intend to make use of the sleeping bags in their emergency accommodation in Flintshire and in their supported accommodation in Wrexham, or when individuals move on and need additional layers to fend off the cold. Shian Thomas, Service Manager emailed Westbridge to thank them for their generosity:

“I would like to thank Westridge for their kind donation of the 100 sleeping bags to The Wallich Homeless Charity”

Share is a charity based in Mold which supports families in crisis and people who are homeless in North Wales and Cheshire and also assists refugees fleeing for their lives, wherever they are in the world. On receiving a donation of the mattress toppers, this was their reaction:

We are absolutely blown away by the very generous donation this week, from Westbridge Furniture, Deeside of 100 sleeping bags. These are perfect for the families that we support. A very big thank you to everyone involved at Westbridge, many of our service users will be warm and snug this winter because of your incredible kindnes

Clocktower Enterprises CIC were also grateful recipients of a number of the mattress toppers. Here’s what their Operations and Projects Director said:

“On behalf of everyone at the Clocktower CIC I would like to thank you so much for the sleeping bags. Our adults with profound learning difficulties and autism will make great use of them and they will go a long, long way, we are very grateful for your kind generosity. Thank you again.”

Other beneficiaries include The Salvation Army, ResourceRenew, based in Holyhead and Save the Family, a Chester-based charity caring for the homeless and families at risk of becoming homeless who have multiple and complex needs.

A huge vote of thanks needs to be passed on to the team at Westbridge for coordinating this outstanding effort which underlines Belfield’s commitment to both minimising our impact on the environment and to caring for the communities within which we operate.

Belfield Workforce Support their Local Communities

At Belfield, we are committed to our outstanding workforce and in turn, they are proud to support the local communities they work in. Over the past year every business within the group has undertaken work to support regional and national charities through fundraising activities and donations to help those less fortunate than themselves. Here are some of the highlights.

At Westbridge, the staff have nominated four main charities to benefit from their endeavours – one for each site – which introduces a bit of healthy competition to the fundraising efforts!

Development organised a Christmas Jumper Day and raised £150 for Nightingale House Hospice, a charity based in Wrexham which provides specialist palliative care services for those with life-limiting illnesses.

WB2’s chosen charity is North Clywd Animal Rescue (NCAR). They recently donated sofas for the charity’s on-site, dog friendly café, Doris’s Bunker. Nicky Owen, Media Relations & Fundraising Manager said, “Thank you for the beautiful sofas, they are now in the café. They are amazing and make such a difference and our customers love them!”

In addition, WB2 staff also raised £900 from the sale of redundant scatters – meaning not only was money raised for a fantastic cause, but no waste was generated.

WB8 took part in Alder Hey Children’s Hospital’s annual Christmas Toy Appeal and sent car boot loads of gifts to children who were unfortunate enough to be spending their Christmas in hospital.

Giddo’s Gift, a charitable trust providing gifts or financial grants to teenagers and young adults suffering from Cancer living in North West England and North Wales, also benefitted from a Christmas Jumper fundraiser at Westbridge.

We are also very grateful to Marks and Spencer, who recently donated £10,000 to be split between NCAR, Nightingale House Hospice and Mind, in recognition of the work done by Westbridge in support of the Marks and Spencer ‘Plan A’ reset initiative.

Staff at Ilkeston have also been busy supporting local and national causes in the past few months.

In November, Paloma Faith contacted Home and asked if they were willing to donate some bedding to support a refugee family she was involved with in East London. Bedding was sent to Paloma for the family to help them set up home and start their new life in the UK.

Also in November, Home and Leisure combined to hold a cake sale which raised £307.00 for Cancer Research UK.

In December, to spread some festive cheer, the Curtain department organised a Christmas Jumper Day in aid of The Salvation Army and a collection for the local food bank, the Ilkeston Arena Community Food Bank. Both initiatives were really well supported by staff across the site.

As part of Home and Leisure’s ongoing support for Ben’s Den, an Ilkeston based charity which supports the families of children fighting leukaemia or cancer by providing caravans for holidays, Troy Smith (H&S Officer) is organising a 50-mile charity walk 2^nd – 3^rd April 2022 from Ladybower Reservoir to Pride Park Stadium. We will update on you how you can support Troy in the coming weeks.

Mental Health Matters

The Belfield Group has always placed great importance on the wellbeing of its employees.

In response to growing awareness about the importance of mental health, and particularly as a result of the effects of the Covid19 pandemic, in 2020 we introduced Mental Health First Aiders across the Group. We are now pleased to announce we have nearly 40 Mental Health First Aiders trained across the five businesses, on hand and ready to help and assist colleagues with their wellbeing.

As part of the ongoing initiative, we meet quarterly with the MHFAs to share our learnings and our experiences. In our recent meeting, we did a role play activity where our first aiders picked a mental health topic from a hat and, in small groups, acted out the scenario. After each role play, the rest of the group gave feedback on what they found useful, what they thought could be applied across similar scenarios, and whether they might approach things differently. Feedback from others and embracing different approaches has been a core success of this programme. The team found the role play an invaluable exercise as they could discover different ideas and approaches from each other.

Overall, the programme has been a great success and has given important support to our colleagues at a time of global uncertainty.

M&S resets Plan A with pledge to cut it’s carbon footprint by a third by 2025 as part of it’s commitment to be fully net-zero by 2040

M&S has reset its Plan A sustainability programme, with a singular focus on becoming a net zero Scope 3 business across its entire supply chain and products by 2040.

M&S has reset its Plan A sustainability programme, with a singular focus on becoming a net zero Scope 3 business across its entire supply chain and products by 2040. The retailer has set out a detailed roadmap to net zero using science-based targets aligned to the UN ambition of limiting global warming to 1.5c. The ambitious target would see M&S achieve full net zero ten years ahead of the government’s UK-wide strategy and will require rapid decarbonisation of its business to cut its carbon footprint by a third by 2025, from a 5.7million tonne 2017 baseline.

Earlier this month, M&S CEO Steve Rowe met with colleagues from Westbridge Furniture, based in Holywell – one of M&S’s original 2008 eco factories.

To learn more about the M&S Reset and Westbridge’s role in attaining that ambitious target, click here: