Charitable giving

As a responsible business, part of our ethos is to support both the local communities where we build as well as those sections of society less fortunate than ourselves.

Charitable Focus

We continue to develop our charitable engagement activities, with focus split across three key areas:

  • Supporting national charities – we enter into partnerships with charities who benefit from direct donations and employee fundraising.
  • Supporting our divisions – each operating division (and Head Office) manages a separate budget to support local charitable and community causes.
  • Supporting our employees – we double match fundraising for our national charity partner and ‘match fund’ employee fundraising undertaken for other causes.

National Support

We are currently in a multi-year partnership with Cancer Research UK (CRUK), a cause close to the hearts of many of our employees. As well as fundraising activities, we also work with CRUK to promote health awareness and cancer prevention information to Bellway employees and our sub-contractors working at sites.

Local Giving

Each of our divisions has an annual budget which is used to support charities, community groups and other initiatives in their local area. Additional local charitable support is allocated from Head Office under the direction of our Charity Committee. We also make small donations through the Community Foundation of Tyne & Wear and Northumberland.

We financially support the running of a breakfast club in a local primary school in Newcastle upon Tyne as part of the Greggs Foundation Breakfast Club programme, with volunteers from Bellway visiting the club on a regular basis to engage with the children.

Charity policy

Bellway is committed to supporting the communities in which it operates and this includes financial support to registered local and national charities.

View policy
Summary of performance

We raised and donated £328,493 for our charity partner Cancer Research UK (CRUK) (2019 – £494,812).

This brings the total raised and donated to CRUK since August 2016 to £1,603,672

Overall Bellway charitable donations and fundraising amounted to £537,338 (2019 – £754,793)

Performance data

The 2020 lockdown and social distancing restrictions have significantly impacted on opportunities to raise funds for CRUK at a time when the charity is forecasting a £150 million fall in income as a result of COVID-19, funds that would normally have been spent on research into cures for cancer. We are still striving to reach our £2 million target by July 2021 but given ongoing social distancing restrictions this will be a difficult total to reach.

Despite the restrictions in the second half of the year, employees, subcontractors and suppliers were still able to raise £140,134 (2019 – £283,841) and combined with Bellway’s ‘double matching’ of employee fundraising, the total raised reached £239,820. To support CRUK in this difficult time Bellway made an additional donation of £88,673 to the charity, lifting the full year total to £328,493 (2019 – £494,812). This brings the total raised and donated to CRUK over the life of our four-year partnership to £1,603,672, with £807,720 as a result of fundraising by our employees, sub-contractors and suppliers.

Bellway also matches employee fundraising for other charitable causes and this year employees raised an additional £110,551, slightly up on last year despite the COVID-19 ‘lockdown’ (2019 – £107,895). Our divisions have also continued to support charities and community groups local to their operating area, with some specific focus on the NHS, local food banks and other charities supporting communities during the pandemic.

In total, across all our charitable activities, Bellway, our employees, subcontractors and suppliers have raised and donated a total of £537,338 to good causes this year (2019 – £754,793), of which £237,338 was raised by our employees, subcontractors and suppliers (2019 – £391,736).