Making a difference to the communities within which we operate, through partnerships with charities and not-for-profit organisations, is an integral part of our sustainability strategy. These partnerships are a source of pride for our store colleagues and drive ongoing engagement with our purpose. In order to achieve this, we provide financial support to local and national charities, and encourage our colleagues to get involved in fundraising and volunteering.
We believe it is important for our colleagues to recognise how our activities can have an impact on those around us. Volunteering and fundraising opportunities can inspire and encourage them to get involved and provide hands-on help where it matters.
In addition to our fundraising and voluntary activities, we continue to support individuals and local charities with free and discounted storage space through our ‘charity room in every store’ scheme.
The provision of this storage space has helped our charity partners provide immediate support to people facing challenges in our local communities. These include charities supporting the homeless, families struggling with food poverty and organisations offering mental health services. We are continuing to work collaboratively with our teams locally as we support our charity partners in helping the communities in the areas within which we operate.
"We are incredibly grateful to Safestore for their long-standing support of people affected by crime. We are thrilled to have had their backing for over ten years now.
Their donated storage space has been especially valuable for us throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to social distancing measures, our access to multi-agency office space has been limited; therefore, we have had to move an increasing amount of our stock into storage.
Even before the pandemic, we relied on the space provided by Safestore as a safe and secure place to store our equipment at no extra cost.
By reducing our costs, Safestore enables us to direct more funds to our services for people struggling with the consequences of crime, allowing us to empower them in their coping and recovery."
Jordan Goucher, Fundraising Manager, Victim Support
Alongside donating or discounting storage space, Safestore often takes part in a number of events each year in order to raise money or awareness for charitable causes; for example, we donated many cardboard boxes for various charitable causes such as City Hearts and The Suit Works.

Safestore holds a charitable fund with Quartet Community Foundation, dedicated to supporting local people in need and the charities they rely on. Between April 2020 and March 2021, Quartet awarded over £5.2 million in grants to more than 930 charitable organisations.
Together, these funded projects supported over 590,000 people in Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. This included those self-isolating or shielding, hungry families and people needing mental health support due to the pressures of the pandemic. Many of these people are often marginalised from mainstream support and opportunities or live in the most deprived areas.

This year, we were awarded the prestigious Investors in People (“IIP”) Platinum accreditation and in celebration of this, Safestore donated £10,000 to FareShare. This donation helped FareShare get the equivalent of 40,000 meals in food to people who are struggling to afford or access a decent meal. The funding has an impact nationwide, allowing FareShare to reach local charities and community groups with more good-to-eat surplus, from school breakfast clubs, community cafés and food banks to women’s refuges and homeless shelters.
"We are very grateful for Safestore’s support. Their generous £10k donation during the pandemic has made it possible for FareShare to get the equivalent of 40,000 meals to some of the most vulnerable members of our society. As we tentatively head out of lockdown, demand for food remains high and delivering more meals will play a valuable part in preventing hunger and ensuring that we do not leave our struggling communities behind."
Alyson Walsh, Commercial Director, FareShare
Construction and the community
We strive to minimise any negative impact of our business operations on our local communities as well as on our environment. We register all our new store developments with the Considerate Constructors Scheme, and we engage with our immediate neighbours on all projects by sending out regular newsletters about what we are doing or if we have any noisy work planned that may create a nuisance.
When we tender for various construction projects, we give local companies the opportunity to bid. Currently we average at 25% of local companies bidding, though this is now at 50% with some of the packages for our upcoming store in Morden as suppliers for steelwork and cladding are based in the local area.
With the Covid-19 restrictions over the last 18 months, we have not been able to engage with the local community as much as we would have liked but we plan to do more activities to benefit them during 2022.