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CRF

Strategic Objectives
  • To invest in local communities including skills training and job creation
  • Over the past 10 years Hammerson has developed a comprehensive training programme to increase the skills of unemployed people living in the vicinity of our shopping centres, in order to provide local communities with access to jobs, and retailers with a pool of skilled workers.
  • In 2009, we began to provide ongoing support to retailers and local communities by working with the National Skills Academies (NSA) and other public sector partners.
  • Hammerson also supports the community through cash and in-kind donations, including community bursaries, volunteer work and school careers tours.
  • Our Community Bursary scheme in Aberdeen helped 13 organisations, including Mental Health Aberdeen, the Forget-me-Not Club, a charity for people with dementia and the Hip Hop school. A number of organisations who benefited from financial assistance took part in launch day celebrations.
  • We have improved our data collection and monitoring of community investment through the introduction of the Community Investment Tool, a bespoke tool modelled on the London Benchmarking Group.
Community chart
  • Jobs for U, the skills training programme we ran to support the opening of our Union Square shopping centre in Aberdeen, delivered strong results. Of the 1,200 people employed at the centre, 56% were previously unemployed.
  • Working with the NSA, Skills Academies were set up in three cities where Hammerson owns a major shopping centre: Birmingham; Bristol and Leicester. Hammerson hosted a ‘pop-up’ Skills Shop at the Bullring shopping centre as part of this roll-out. Further academies will open in Aberdeen, Brent Cross and Reading in 2010.
  • As part of our ongoing involvement in the Spitalfields area of London, Hammerson launched the Spitalfields Art Prize in 2009, a £45,000 bursary awarded to artist Kenny Hunter to create a piece for display at Bishops Square.
  • The Government's recently released Regeneration Framework “Transforming Places; Changing Lives”, the current draft PPS4 “Planning for Sustainable Economic Development”, the forthcoming duty on local authorities to produce detailed economic assessments of their areas, and the proposed replacement of the needs test with a broader impact assessment framework as part of the revised PPS 6, are likely to increase the range of criteria councils use to consider the potential impact of a proposed development.
  • Indirect charity collections (principally money donated by visitors to our shopping centres) rose substantially in 2009 as we took the decision to donate the equivalent of the 2.5% VAT reduction to local charitable partnerships.

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