Our community

Our services are an integral part of the community. We are committed to encouraging and promoting wider corporate community involvement and engaging in dialogue and activity with the wider community in which our services are based.

We regularly contribute to public policy debate through policy responses to government and support for public policy research. Over the past year we have contributed to debate on social care, housing, energy efficiency, local government and criminal justice. To see our policy responses click here

We recognise the invaluable community contribution that our employees make in delivering public services and their involvement in wider community activities. Our aim is to support them through policies and practices relating to social investment and charitable contributions which maximise the social rewards from such investment.

Community Link is part of our UK community investment policy. The scheme helps to improve our people’s community involvement at a local level and gives them the opportunities to support good causes that are important to them. Every permanent UK Northgate employee is entitled to one day’s paid leave to participate in a team community-related activity. As a result, our corporate volunteering programme has extended. This year, our people have engaged in initiatives such as National Volunteering Week, Time to Read, Time to Compute, and the Company maintains strong links with Business in the Community, the Prince’s Trust and the Peace Alliance. Our targets are to increase the take up of Community Link with active engagement of 30 per cent of our employees by 2011 and to increase the percentage of employees that take up payroll giving by 10 per cent.