Community matters

Supporting our local community means lots of different things: from job creation to spending with local suppliers, staff volunteering and donating to charity. Here’s a snapshot of some of the things we did to help our community last year.

Charity volunteering and donations

In 2023, the Simply team spent record amounts of time volunteering and donated a record amount to charities.

We’ve taken great pride in supporting four key charities: 

• Marine conservation charity Sea-Changers, which works tirelessly to raise awareness about pollution, climate change and unsustainable fishing.
• Local charity, St Clare Hospice, which looks after hundreds of people every year by providing free, compassionate care to support adults who are living with a life-limiting illness, facing the end of life or experiencing bereavement.
• Essex Wildlife Trust, which helps protect the wildlife and countryside around where our business is based.
• And finally, our local Trussell Trust food bank, where our staff have spent 70 hours volunteering over the past year.

 

Supporting other local businesses

Supporting our local community isn’t just about charity. In 2022, we set ourselves a target of procuring more from local suppliers. This not only helps our local economy thrive, but also reduces our carbon footprint. In 2023, 25.7% of our overall spend was with local suppliers, compared with 20% in 2022.

Job creation

In 2023 we created 7 new roles in the business – a job growth rate of 15%. This exceeded our public commitment to maintain job growth rate between 1-14%. 

We also continue to pay 100% of our staff the Living Wage.

If you would like to find out more about our commitments and targets when it comes to our local community, you can find out more here.