Our ESG Plan: Purpose

We love the place we call home and believe we have a duty to help our communityin any we can.

This starts with paying our fair share of taxes. We do not use any tax avoidance strategies, such as transferring profits offshore or artificially decreasing them to boost shareholder return.

But it doesn’t stop there. Every year, we pledge to commit 1% of net profit to causes where we feel, despite our relatively small size, we can make a real difference.

OUR PLEDGES FOR 2024

This year, our pledge is to commit 0.5% of net profit to charitable initiatives that will help people and nature thrive in the corners of our community that are most overlooked, and another 0.5% to charities that seek to end the stigma around mental health:

• We will provide school uniforms for 85 children living in Ladywood – an area just a few miles from our Edgbaston home, where 54% of children live in poverty.  Working with the Ladywood Community Project, all the families we support will be referred through either Children’s Trust workers, schools, or benefits and debt advisors, ensuring we are helping the most vulnerable families in our local community.
• Having transformed one stretch of canal in 2023, we are continuing to work with the Canal and River Trust, adopting a second stretch of canal in a deprived areas of our local neighbourhood. Through paid impact days for the whole team, we will help one little corner of Birmingham flourish through litter picking, the planting of fruit trees and flowers to attract pollinating insects, and the removal of plastic from the water so that it doesn’t reach our seas.
• Finally, in early 2023, we lost a former colleague and long-standing friend of WPR, Stu Haynes, to suicide. Tragically, suicide remains the biggest killer of under 35s. In his memory, we supported two charities very close to his heart – ANDYSMANCLUB and Chasing the Stigma. So important is the work that they are doing that we have chosen to continue our support this year – hoping we can help others facing storms in their lives.