Corporate Responsibility

Community

Our community investment continues to focus on education and life-long learning. As a leading bookseller and stationer, this is an area where we can use our knowledge and resources to make a real difference.

This year, in line with our commitments to the Per Cent Club, we continued to invest over 1% of our pre-tax profits in charities and community projects. The chart below gives a breakdown of our community contributions.

Promoting literacy in partnership with the WHSmith Trust

Second year of WHSmith Summer Read

July and August saw the second year of the Summer Read, a partnership between WHSmith PLC, the WHSmith Trust and the National Literacy Trust’s Reading is Fundamental initiative. This is part of a three-year programme which encourages children across the UK to develop a love of reading and helps to maintain literacy levels during the long summer holidays.

This year, more than 2,700 children in 15 locations around the country took part in the Summer Read events.

WHSmith Trust and WHSmith PLC will provide funding and support again for a Summer Read in 2007.

For a summary of the impact of the 2005/06 events, please click here.


Employees making a difference in their local communities

This year, we launched the WHSmith Community Awards to recognise the excellent work our staff do in the local communities in which we operate. Awards were given to 20 teams who had set a leading example by building strong links in their local community.

Staff at our Gateshead MetroCentre store received a special award for outstanding achievement. The team has built a partnership with the Thomas Hepburn Community School which serves one of the most deprived inner city areas in the country. Support includes donating prizes to reward improvements in numeracy, literacy or attendance and helping the school to promote educational events and encourage exam revision.



Products to promote and support charity and education

An increasingly popular way for our customers to support charity is through buying products with charity links. Our Adopt-an-Animal range, launched in autumn 2005, proved popular with our customers and we will be extending the range in 2006.

Our charity Christmas cards continue to raise significant amounts of money for our charity partners as do the recycling schemes we offer to customers, for used toner cartridges and for Christmas cards. More information can be found in the Environment section of this report.