Record improvements in our health and safety performance have been delivered through visible leadership, simple systems and clear expectations. These three core objectives will continue to fuel our drive for sustained leading performance.
Our “Cricket in the Community” initiative launched in May provides cricket coaching to local schools as part of our support for education and to promote sports learning as part of the National Curriculum.
Caring for the community
We are committed to being a good neighbour to our local community and our “caring for the community” philosophy involves being part of local and regional communities.
Throughout 2006, we maintained close relations with the local community through formal and informal discussions with representatives of parish, district and county councils. As a major employer, we sought to take an active role in business community organisations, such as the Selby Industrial Association and the Selby Communities and District Industrial Mission. We furthered our community involvement through sponsorship activities, education initiatives and site visits.
Sponsorship in the community
During 2006, we made donations of £66,896 in total across a range of charitable and non-charitable causes. Of that total, charitable donations amounted to £45,872 (2005: £37,500).Some £12,000 of the total donations were made under the direction of our sponsorship team, across a range of activities within a 20 mile radius of the Power Station. Each month the team meets to consider requests received for charitable donations and community sponsorship and makes awards against our criteria of furthering community, environmental and sporting interests. An example of the good causes supported through the sponsorship team in 2006, is the “Save the Hinge and Support Young People” appeal, organised by the Hinge Centre at Goole. The Centre works with marginalised and excluded young people up to the age of 25 offering information, guidance and support. Support is offered both within the Centre and on an outreach basis, developing projects for living skills and inclusion in other organisations and the surrounding community.
Outside of the sponsorship team’s donations, and for the second year running, we ran a scheme to encourage and reward good safety performance during the planned outage period. A total of £6,000 was raised during the 12 week outage, the maximum possible under the scheme, which earmarks £500 for charitable causes for every seven days that goes by without an injury requiring more than first aid treatment. Employees and the outage contractor, Doosan Babcock, were each asked to nominate a charity and the Appeal for Poppy and Cancer Research UK each received a donation of £3,000. The Appeal for Poppy is a local charity which aims to raise £15,000 to send Poppy Parritt from Brigg, North Lincolnshire to Poland to receive revolutionary treatment to help with a medical condition which affects her legs, making it very difficult to walk unaided.
The Group also operates a “£ for £” matching scheme, under which we match, £ for £, any monies raised for charity by employees at the Power Station. During 2006, approximately £32,000 of the total donations made were through this scheme.
Education in the community
Our “Cricket in the Community” initiative launched in May has gone from strength to strength. With the backing of the Yorkshire Cricket Board (“YCB”) and endorsed by England ladies’ cricketer, Katherine Brunt, three England Cricket Board (“ECB”) qualified coaches, all employees of Drax, took cricket coaching to primary schools in the local area as part of our support for education and to promote sports learning as part of the National Curriculum. Through 11 school visits, a drop in session at the Great Yorkshire Show and two Summer Camps, we reached 611 children.Fully in keeping with the education theme, in 2006, for the first time, we sponsored education-related awards. The Community Pride Awards is a campaign by local newspaper, The Press and York City Council to recognise the contribution to the community made every day by people from all walks of life. We were pleased to sponsor the Teacher of the Year Award, which went to Dave Counter of Millthorpe School, York.
We also recognised the success and outstanding achievements of apprentices through the annual Empower Apprentice Awards. We sponsored the Team Award and were delighted to see our second year apprentices forming part of the winning team.