We are delighted to have been accredited as a Westminster Lion, recognised by the City Council for our positive impact on Westminster communities; delivering opportunities for residents, and improving their neighbourhoods and environment within the City.
For Capita, corporate responsibility (CR) means acting responsibly in all that we do, not only in our commercial activities, but beyond these to support all our stakeholders, including the communities and environment in which we work. We do this by embedding responsible business practices at the heart of our company through our own community and environmental programmes and additionally by working collaboratively with our clients to support their corporate responsibility agendas.
With over 1,000 employees based in London and our head office in Westminster, we work with local community groups and charities sharing the skills of our people through volunteering and fundraising for various causes.
Neighbourhood – sharing skills in the community
Last year, we focussed our efforts on combatting homelessness by supporting The Cardinal Hume Centre and The Passage. We helped The Cardinal Hume Centre through providing:
- a ‘digital inclusion mentor’ who visits the centre once a week to provide one-to-one IT mentoring and training, shaped according to the individual’s specific needs; and
- volunteers to support group trips and events, such as serving lunch at a recent dance project.
To support rough sleepers in Westminster, we have raised money, donated food and clothes and volunteered at The Passage.
This year, our people have continued to share their skills in local communities running a mentoring programme with local school students who are interested in careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), creating a 360 promotional video for a local academy and clearing up a local nature reserve.
Environment
Across Capita, we understand that our operations have an impact on the environment and look to reduce our negative impact and maximise our positive impact by focusing on energy reduction, reduction in business travel and resource efficiency including waste management.
We are proud to have reduced our global carbon footprint once again last year by 11% from 2016. We have achieved this predominantly through our energy reduction programme in our UK portfolio, which we commenced in 2015, and has already resulted in a financial saving of £1.8m. The programme has delivered improvements in the way we measure, manage and monitor our energy consumption (electricity and gas). We will continue to focus on driving down our energy emissions in 2018, as well as look at improving the way we collect data on our resources use, for example, waste and water.
Several of our sites are certified to the international standard for environmental management, ISO 14001 and we run a car share scheme across the UK. In London, we encourage staff to use public transport, walk and cycle offering a Cycle2Work scheme to enable staff to buy bikes.
Jennie Colville, Head of Sustainability, Capita, said: "We recognise that Westminster is a place of great opportunity, where aspirations can become reality. Today, like Westminster, Capita is a place of opportunity with over 800 people working in offices located in the City. We will continue to support our local communities to thrive sharing our skills where they are needed most."
