Tritax Management has launched a social impact foundation in a bid to measure and ramp up the positive socio-economic changes it can deliver to communities.
The foundation will sit within the group’s governance structure and oversee activities across the business, including its listed funds, EuroBox and Big Box REIT, and private funds.
It will report regularly to Tritax’s operations committee and to relevant ESG and investment committees to ensure it is consistently benchmarking progress.
Its aims include working with customers and stakeholders to create local and national partnerships to deliver social impact, allocating money based on a clear set of criteria, focusing investment into communities that need it the most, and teaming up with charity partners to determine appropriate performance indicators.
It is understood that the investor is in the process of signing with a major charitable partner for the foundation.
As part of a five-year plan managed by the foundation, Tritax Big Box intends to invest more than £2m in education and skills-building initiatives, supporting people from primary school age to tertiary education and employment.
Those include an existing community benefit fund, which makes donations to local initiatives per sq ft of new logistics space developed.
The REIT’s five-year strategy seeks to positively impact the lives of 250,000 young people, prioritising those most in need in communities in which it owns or develops properties.
Alan Somerville, head of ESG at Tritax, told EG that the foundation will help meet increased appetite from investors, customers and public sector partners for greater understanding of the social value it is delivering. It will also make it easier for stakeholders to track its progress.
Somerville said: “Social impact is a key part of our ESG strategy.
“Like most people it was probably the most underdeveloped part – a significant focus being, as you’d imagine, on the environment – so we’ve been working for a while now on how we really move social impact to the next level. The social impact foundation is the manifestation of all of that.
“We wanted to be able to measure our impact and prove to ourselves – and all of our stakeholders – that we’re doing what we said we were going to do. We’ve supported good causes for a number of years, so the foundation brings together everything we’re doing to date and accelerates that.”
Labour retention in industrial and logistics is among the key issues that the team hopes to address.
“Logistics as a sector, and the career opportunities within it, is probably not very well understood,” said Somerville. “We want to change that.”
Photo © Tritax Group
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