Corporate Responsibility

Introduction

For Wyboston Lakes corporate responsibility is about managing our business to meet our mission statement: “Customers are our business and our future ”. We recognise that as a service industry our end product must be to fulfil, and ideally to exceed, our customers’ expectations. We set out to achieve that end product using a company culture that relies heavily on our teams of colleagues working closely together to achieve consistently excellent results and to reach challenging but realistic targets. We judge our success not purely on financial performance, but also on the impact we have on our customers, our colleagues, our local area and our environment.

We are committed to continuing investment in the Wyboston Lakes site, and to continuous improvement in all areas of our service delivery. Our vision is to continue to grow and improve by always delivering World Class Customer Care. One of our key measurement tools in this process is tracking our customer satisfaction rates - we aim to raise these to 95%, at which point we believe we would be at the forefront of the industry and truly delivering World Class service. Satisfaction rates continue to rise, reaching 91.09% in 2006, 91.43% for 2007 and 91.85% for 2008.

In pursuing our aims and visions, Wyboston Lakes accepts the responsibility to act in a manner which produces positive effects for our customers, our colleagues our suppliers and our community whilst minimising adverse effects on the environment.

Our Customers

Our driving principle is to deliver excellent and consistent customer care, so that we are well known in the market place for:

• efficient and friendly service delivery
• high quality best value products
• flexibility and innovation

We take all appropriate measures, including comprehensive training programmes, and structured maintenance schedules, to ensure that the safety and security of our customers, and our colleagues, is always assured.

Our Colleagues

We aim to recruit the right person for the job, to support our colleagues with fair, ethical and correct employment policies and to give them every opportunity for success and advancement. Our colleagues come from widely perse cultural backgrounds, which we believe is a source of strength for us. We value colleagues who accomplish goals and solve problems, and our culture is one of achievement resulting from effective teamwork, underpinned by two-way consultation coupled with sensible empowerment levels. We expect our colleagues to be:

• customers’ champions
• flexible and innovative
• enthusiastic
• seekers for excellence
• very comfortable in a service role
• obsessive about attention to detail
• team focused
• trustworthy, reliable and loyal
• friendly and happy

We help our colleagues to gain new skills and strengthen existing ones with both internal and external training and development programmes.

Excellent performance by inpiduals is recognised by our Gold Wings scheme and by personal congratulation cards from directors, and first class team performance is recognised by team bonus payments.

The Environment

Our policy is to ensure that our operations have the lowest possible impact on the environment. We are making continuing improvements in our energy efficiency, and have active campaigns aimed at customers and colleagues alike to save energy. We always ensure that new buildings are as environmentally friendly as possible, and we continue to explore new ways of minimising waste. We are committed to preventing accidental pollution of the local water table. We aim to recycle everything for which a recycling route exists.

Some of our environmental initiatives are:

• planting over 5,000 trees on our site over the last 5 years
• installing light saving monitor switches in small rooms
• constant and detailed monitoring of energy usage
• tight control of air conditioning systems to ensure rooms not in use are not treated
• reducing the number of suppliers we use to ensure that fewer but larger deliveries result in a smaller carbon footprint
• the funding of cycle paths in the local area to encourage our employees to make their journey to work carbon neutral
• encouraging the re-use of towels in bedrooms rather than daily laundry
• recycling of:

glass bottles
plastic bottles
cardboard
paper
newspapers
waste cooking oil
printer cartridges and cassettes
gardening and golf course trimmings and clippings

The Community

We are a significant employer in the local area, with the majority of our colleagues living within three miles of our site.

Wyboston Lakes acts as a focal point for the local population because of the wide range of leisure activities on the site: golf course and driving range, sports and fitness club, watersports, coarse fishing on lakes and river, nature reserve, as well as wining and dining in the Waterfront Brasserie

We sponsor a local youth football team, provide funds to the St Neots Town Centre Initiative, and support the local Young Enterprise scheme.

Our charitable trust provides financial support to a wide range of local charities, having donated Ł650,000 over the last 18 years, recent notable recipients being Bedford Child Development Centre, Addenbrooke’s Hospital and Sandy Upper School.

Our colleagues are encouraged to take part in charitable activities, both as inpiduals and as teams, and we organise a long-distance sponsored walk and two large charity quizzes per year. We also host and support the Mayor of St Neots annual charity golf day.

Our Suppliers

We expect our suppliers to be environmentally and socially responsible. Wherever possible we use locally sourced produce and local suppliers. We have reduced the number of suppliers we use so as to gain benefit from volume, which has the added environmental benefit of fewer road journeys to the site.