Corporate Responsiblity
  
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), is the modern term for the approach adopted by Richard Otto 25 years ago and extolled ever since, “to make the world a better place wherever and whenever Severn Partnership are involved”.

Over the years we have always tried to consider the impact of our activities on customers, employees, the environment, the communities in which we work and society in general.

More recently, CSR has been seen as a key element in the development of our business and positively encouraged to all members of the team to contribute to a range of initiatives. We are proud of the commitment shown by all our people in supporting CSR initiatives and the way in which they have developed their own ideas, some of which are featured below.

Support for Charities: 17 years ago the Hope House charity founded in memory of Hope, a little girl who lived locally. Severn Partnership were able to provide free office space while the charity found its feet. Hope House now provides palliative care to terminally ill children from Shropshire, Cheshire, Powys and Wrexham.

We try to make fundraising fun. In1996 all the team completed the RICS 3 Peaks Challenge, climbing Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon within a 48 hour period to raise money for the RICS Benevolent Fund.

In 2005 and 2007, teams from Severn Partnership competed in the Dragon Boat Races on the River Severn and in May 2006 Mark Combes walked 177 miles of Offa’s Dyke, supported by daily stints by other members of the team.

Supporting African Communities: A team lead by Sally Jury decided that instead of giving each other Christmas Cards each year they would put that money (and more) into a pot to contribute to the development of African communities. Each year they buy goats, school equipment and farming provisions for the villages they support.

Green Travel Scheme: While Severn Partnership has long had a comprehensive Environmental Policy, Anett Dude decided to take this one step further and introduced a “Severn Partnership Travel Scheme “ to reduce our carbon footprint.

People are paid a mileage rate to abandon their solitary car journeys and arrange lifts, car share, walk, cycle or take public transport. One particularly hardy member of the team managed to cycle 34 miles in one day, and still do a full shift!

All those taking part donate money the gain to their favourite charities. As an extra reward, the individuals donating the most money and making least use of cars are entitled to additional leave.

The scheme has proved so popular that a new bike shed has had to be constructed next to the offices, for which Annet was able to secure a 50% Local Authority grant. The local MP when opening the facility, was so impressed, that he went out and bought a bike and now cycles to work whenever he can!

The benefits of the cycle scheme are not just environmental, our team is healthier and we now have an active mountain biking fraternity, who often compete and train together. We also make use of mountain bikes when working on location, further reducing vehicle mileage.

Business Education Links: Over the years Severn Partnership have employed a steady stream of school-leavers and the links established with local schools have resulted in the company taking part in a programme to promote careers in the industry to the next generation of surveyors.

Severn Partnership have attended Career Fairs at the local 6th form Colleges and all school leavers employed by the company are encouraged and supported in attending evening classes at a local Technical College to improve on their qualifications.

For over 16 years we have taken university students on degree courses for their year out in industry from Nottingham, Bradford and Harper Adams Universities and have also sponsored a number of employees through university.

Our first sponsored student over 20 years ago, Mark Combes was financially supported through University College London, and fully repaid our investment by becoming Managing Director in 2007.

Since then we have sponsored Jamie Price, now a Senior Surveyor through the University of East London and at the moment are supporting Ashley Johnson at University College London.

We have also developed strong links with the Geomatics Department at University College London and have taking on UCL graduates each year for the last 5 years.

Young Enterprise: Three years ago, after we had completed a presentation at a business networking meeting, we were approached by Aileen Roberts who saw an opportunity to meet on of her immediate objectives by persuading Severn Partnership to become involved in Young Enterprise.

We listened to Aileen’s proposal and had no hesitation in agreeing to support Young Enterprise, a national education charity founded in 1963 to forge links between schools and industry.

The charity’s mission statement, “to inspire and equip young people to learn and succeed through enterprise” fitted closely to our own business philosophy and since then we have been involved in delivering “The Primary Programme” to children between 4 yrs and 11 years old. The programme consists of 6 modules:-
  • Ourselves Age 4-5
  • Our Families Age5-7
  • Our Community Age 7-8
  • Our City Age 8-9
  • Our Nation Age 9-10
  • Our World Age 10-11
Each of the modules are designed to be enjoyable and interactive and are presented to groups of up to 36 enthusiastic children!

Members of the Severn Partnership team at all levels have volunteered to deliver these modules and engage with the children by sharing their work experiences through a structured programme of learning. A variety of hands on activities are also included to enable the children to better understand the relevance of their education to the workplace.

Each module covers 5 sessions of between I and 2 hours and so far 10 members of the team have been involved in 4 schools; often taking tripods and instruments along to show off the latest technology.

The response from the children has been fantastic and their feedback and questions always keeps us on our toes. Everyone who has taken part has found the experience fascinating and even hardened senior surveyors, used to managing tough teams in difficult conditions, have butterflies in the stomach when standing up in front of a class of 36 five year olds. But as Aileen points out, “when you don’t feel like that, you loose your edge !

Work Life Balance: So, while we work hard and try to put something back into the community we also believe in playing hard, so that we all achieve a high output work life balance.

Each year a number of events are organised; from the Summer BBQ to a Christmas party and ad hoc events when the sun is shining and we just fancy getting out for a drink to relax.

More energetic activities are the annual 10 pin bowling event, white water rafting, motor track racing, mountain biking, and the Severn Partnership football team, a less regular activity which depends on the age profile, skills and fitness of the current work force.

We ask a lot of the team at work so feel it is only right to put equal effort into creating an active social life and making Severn Partnership an enjoyable and rewarding place to work. To achieve this, we promote a relaxed but focused working atmosphere and encourage people to take ownership and make work, work for them.