Corporate Social Responsibility

The BSW Group is privileged to operate across a number of sites in the UK and Europe. This is a privilege which the Group takes seriously and responsibly, and we encourage full community and stakeholder engagement at all sites. Through our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Committee we are committed to making a positive contribution to the communities in which we operate.

We aim to be a good neighbour and we understand our impact, as many of our operations are rurally situated and in most cases in isolation from any other industrial development. This imposes a responsibility on the business to consider the impact very carefully. The positive impact is in terms of employment and local business to business spending.

Our CSR Committee – consisting of representatives from companies within the BSW Group and covering many disciplines – has developed a set of criteria to make sure we donate fairly and consistently to the communities in which we operate:

Charities and community groups we support should fall under one of the following categories:
• Registered with the Charity Commission, Inland Revenue, or Scottish Registered Charities.
• A CASC member with Inland Revenue, or a local education authority.
• Local group or individual that is known to BSW and can be vouched for by a senior manager.

Charities and community groups applying for funding should ideally be situated close to Group locations, that is offices, sawmills or sites relating to significant contracts or partnerships across any of BSW’s companies: BSW Timber, BSW Energy, Tilhill, Maelor and Alvic.

Charitable donation requests should meet at least one of the following criteria:
• Supports an employee in a local fund-raising endeavour
• Will benefit the local community within a 20-mile radius of one of the aforementioned locations.
• Uses BSW Timber products in a project
• Is relevant to Tilhill’s service activities (e.g. tree planting, environmental services, vegetation management, invasive species control, etc).
• Supports an educational project

Exclusions:
• We only contribute to charities and projects based in the UK, unless in exceptional circumstances.
• We don’t fund religious or politically biased charities.
• We only consider funding animal welfare charities if the charity is a suitable educational resource for children.
• We don’t buy advertising space in charitable publications.
• We don’t give funding to third-party organisations.

Click here and complete our charitable giving form to submit a request for consideration. We aim to respond within two weeks.