People
At Big Yellow we aim to provide a lively, fun and enjoyable working environment, without losing our commitment to delivering the very best standards of customer service.
We encourage a culture of partnership within the business and believe in staff participating in corporate performance through bonus schemes and share incentives. Many employees benefit from an HMRC approved Sharesave Scheme, which provides an opportunity to invest in the future success of Big Yellow at a discount to the prevailing share price at the date of each invitation. Our stakeholder pension scheme has been taken up by over two thirds of employees eligible to join and a voucher awards scheme is used extensively across the business to recognise and reward our staff’s efforts and achievements.
We aim to promote employee wellbeing through a range of flexible working options which include flexitime, staggered hours, home working and sabbaticals. We provide a comprehensive range of medical support and advice though our occupational health providers and have arranged corporate gym membership on a national basis, as well as a Cycle to Work Scheme.
We continue to recognise the importance of communication and consultation with an annual spring conference, regular formal and informal meetings, quarterly newsletters and weekly operational updates. In addition, the Directors and senior management spend a significant amount of time in the stores and are accessible to employees at all levels. A bi-annual Employee Attitude Survey provides management with key feedback and guidance as to where to focus their attention to further improve the working environment.
In March of this year we were delighted to have been recognised as one of the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For 2012 and also to have achieved “Two Star Status” for the Best Companies Accreditation.
We had 310 full-time, part-time and casual employees in the business at the year end (2011: 301 employees) and recruiting and retaining the right calibre people remains critical to the continued success of the Company.
We promote the individual development of staff through training and regular performance appraisals and delivered just over 745 days training to employees in the last year, equating to an average of approximately 2.4 days training per employee. In the stores, two thirds of the managerial posts have been filled by internal promotions.
Property and development
During the year our property team has focussed on building out selected sites within our development pipeline, and selling surplus land held in our balance sheet.
We believe the continuing difficulties in the banking and capital markets make access to capital required to fund growth more difficult and will slow down the growth in self storage store openings in the market generally. We believe that we are in a relatively strong position with our freehold property assets, with the proven ability to access more funding when the opportunity presents itself.
We now have a portfolio of 70 stores and sites of which 66 are currently open and a further 3 have planning consents, with planning negotiations ongoing at our site in central Manchester.
Development pipeline
There are three freehold sites with planning for Big Yellow stores to be developed. We also own a 4.5 acre development site in central Manchester where we are in planning discussions for a mixed use scheme incorporating a new Big Yellow store. The status of the development pipeline is summarised in the table below:
| Store | Location | Status | Anticipated capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gypsy Corner, West London |
Highly visible site on A40 in Acton, West London |
Consent granted |
70,000 sq ft |
| Enfield, North London |
Prominent site on the A10 Great Cambridge Road, London |
Consent granted |
60,000 sq ft |
| Guildford Central |
Prime location in centre of Guildford on Woodbridge Meadows |
Consent granted |
56,000 sq ft |
| Manchester Central |
Prime location on Water Street in central Manchester |
Planning under negotiation |
50,000 sq ft to 70,000 sq ft |
Our landmark wholly owned store at Chiswick, with strong visibility from the M4 flyover, opened in April. Chiswick is our only planned store opening for the financial year ending 31 March 2013.
The Group manages the construction and fit-out of its stores in-house, as we believe it provides both better control and quality, and we have an excellent record of building stores on time and within budget. The total construction spend in the year was £23.3 million, of which £20.1 million was in the wholly owned Group, including £4.4 million in relation to the Richmond hotel development.
Corporate Social Responsibility
The Board employs a Corporate Social Responsibility Manager, who reports to the Board through the Operations Director. Click here for our detailed Corporate Social Responsibility. Our policy on Corporate Social Responsibility is set out on our website bigyellow.co.uk/csr.
Our CSR programme for 2012 committed to focus on our most significant environmental challenge of energy efficiency and carbon reduction. In order to achieve these twin objectives we:
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- Continued our lighting efficiency programmes to gain an absolute carbon (CO2) emission reduction of 5.5%;
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- Reduced carbon intensity emissions by 10.1% per store gross internal area and by 18.6% per customer occupied space, with three new stores opening and an increase of 16.1% in occupied space;
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- Increased our annual solar electricity generation by 15.3% to 123,489 kWh and saved carbon emissions equivalent to 64.4 tCO2 in the year ended 31 March 2012;
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- Generated cumulative solar PV electricity of 374 MWh since the first installation in March 2008, an increase of 49.4% on last year’s cumulative total; and
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- Generated total Feed in Tariff income, displaced electricity costs and carbon tax reductions of £90,000 since 1 April 2010.
During the year we were awarded a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in ‘Sustainable Development’, and also obtained a place in the Sunday Times Best 60 Green Companies to Work for.