Investors in People: we are GOLD!

We are delighted to announce that we have achieved the Investors in People Gold accreditation.

We are delighted to announce that our parent Group, the Useful Simple Trust, has achieved the Investors in People Gold accreditation.

Investors in People (IiP) is an international organisation that encourages businesses to value their people above all else. The ‘We Invest in People’ accreditation is for organisations which can show they’re actively making their workplaces better for their employees.

What makes us stand out from the rest?

We cultivate a healthy, safe, inclusive, and respectful workplace that prioritises engagement and developing our people. At the Trust we listen and learn, demonstrate care, respect, and enable people to feel empowered and a valued member of our teams. This respect for difference in people, skills, knowledge, experiences, and backgrounds is proven to drive growth, excellence, and innovation.

What does this mean for our staff and customers?

The Trust, and all it’s Group companies, are committed to providing opportunities to develop our people and grow their careers.

By focusing on our people, we can hear from our team members and learn from what they tell us. Our diverse and inclusive teams benefit our people, our clients, and our communities, bringing rich experience, driving our purpose, and enabling greater engagement and productivity.

Following our Silver certification in 2020, we are incredibly grateful to our beneficiaries for their commitment, loyalty, participation, and support during this journey.

We are officially a Silver Carbon Literate Organisation

The Useful Simple Trust has today announced that it has been accredited as a Silver Carbon Literate Organisation (CLO).

Silver Carbon Literature Organisation

Useful Simple Trust has today announced that it has been accredited as a Silver Carbon Literate Organisation (CLO), highlighting the organisation’s dedication towards tackling climate change, reducing its organisational carbon emissions, and its commitment to working towards a lower-carbon future.

Carbon Literacy is defined as, “An awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis,” and revolves around a day’s worth of learning and action on climate change.

Climate action is an area that unites all Useful Simple Trust brands and is at the heart of our ‘Get Set Zero’ strand. Therefore, in 2021, carbon literacy was identified as a key skills area that all employees needed to maintain to excel in their respective roles. This is further to the Trust achieving its purpose-led mission to trailblaze within the built environment.

A CLO is an organisation that has been accredited by The Carbon Literacy Project as being ‘culturally Carbon Literate’; maintaining a substantial proportion of its workforce as Carbon Literate and demonstrating its Carbon Literacy through its organisational behaviour. CLO accreditation is a tiered system with Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum levels, requiring increasing levels of commitment to action on climate change and creating a low-carbon culture.

To become accredited as a Silver Carbon Literate Organisation, the Trust trained 44% of staff from across our four brands, with the remainder set to participate in Cohort 2 in early 2024. Using bespoke Carbon Literacy training materials, we co-created our organisational carbon action plan and routemap to net zero, which we are now implementing, as part of our commitment to decarbonising our business activities.

Carrie Behar, Head of Sustainability at Useful Simple Trust, commented: “We recognise that our greatest asset is our people. By investing in Carbon Literacy training and accreditation, we are empowering them to further our mission to be a force for good in the sustainable and regenerative transformation of the built environment.”

Signatories of UK Architects Declare

Proud signatories for the UK Architects Declare, reducing carbon emissions and working towards race to Net Zero principles.

Architects Declare ombre background

We are working with our sister brands at the Useful Simple Trust to reduce carbon emisisons by the work we do; reusing existing materials, refurbishing where possible, and working towards race to Net Zero principles.

The twin crises of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss are the most serious issue of our time. Buildings and construction play a major part, accounting for nearly 40% of energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions whilst also having a significant impact on our natural habitats.

For everyone working in the construction industry, meeting the needs of our society without breaching the earth’s ecological boundaries will demand a paradigm shift in our behaviour. Together with our clients, we will need to commission and design buildings, cities and infrastructures as indivisible components of a larger, constantly regenerating and self-sustaining system.

The research and technology exist for us to begin that transformation now, but what has been lacking is collective will. Recognising this, we are committing to strengthen our working practices to create architecture and urbanism that has a more positive impact on the world around us.

Dome-in-a-day

As part of the year-long Wren 300 celebrations, we organised a workshop where 80 students built a replica of the St Paul's Cathedral dome.

As part of the year-long Wren 300 celebrations, and together with Expedition Engineering and London Diocesan Board for Schools, Useful Studio helped organise a workshop where 80 students built a replica of the St Paul’s Cathedral dome.

A time-lapse video of the student’s fantastic structure can be seen below. In line with our circular principles, all materials were recycled including 2200 foam bricks, donated to the Oxford House community arts space in Bethnal Green.

A big thank you to BBC London for broadcasting the story and the Royal Academy of Engineering for funding the project and the below video.

Launching our 2022-23 Impact Report

We are excited to announce the release of our 2022 Impact Report.

Today is a big day for us here at Useful Studios and our parent brand, the Useful Simple Trust!

We are excited to announce the release of our B Corp UK impact report document. As a B Corporation, we are committed to using the power of the built environment to solve social and environmental problems. This report details the ways in which we are working to make a positive impact on the world through our skills, services, and operations.

In this report, you will learn about our progress in key areas such as sustainability, education and inclusion, and community engagement. You will also see our ambitious plans to reduce our environmental footprint and support the communities where we do business.

We believe that companies have a responsibility to do more than just make a profit. We are proud to be part of the B Corp community and to be working towards a better future for all.

Thank you for your support and for helping us to make a difference.

Grab yourself a full copy of the report here.

Berkeley Foundation football match

Raising money so young people and their communities will have the tools and resources to thrive and be a force for change.

We were delighted to join the Berkeley Foundation, Demelza Hospice Care for Children, and our colleagues from across the Useful Simple Trust for a friendly five-a-side football match.

The Berkeley Foundation is the independent charitable foundation set up by the Berkeley Group in 2011. All their resources are used to support organisations, young people and communities to have a positive impact in the areas where the Berkeley Group works.

Joining Grosvenor’s Supplier Mentoring Programme

We are committed to achieving the gold standard of climate pledges and taking meaningful climate action.

As part of our net zero commitment, we are proud to be part of the Grosvenor’s Supplier Mentoring Programme, working alongside over 29 SME’s across the UK as they work towards a science based target.

The Programme aims to take SMEs on a net zero journey, connecting them with experts in sustainability to learn at five workshops over eight months, with clinic sessions in between. This is covered across five areas:

  1. The business case for net zero and committing to a science based target,
  2. Calculating a baseline,
  3. Setting an action plan,
  4. Achieving a validated science based target,
  5. Offsetting

By joining the mentoring programme, we are committed to achieving the gold standard of climate pledges and taking meaningful climate action.

We are a B Corp

Recognising the Trust's fundamental mission and Ethos, as established in 2008.

Certified B Corp logo

We are delighted to announce that we are now a B Corp

Becoming a B Corp is recognition of the fundamental mission and Ethos the Useful Simple Trust set out over 10 years ago. This certification means we are meeting the highest verified standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.

As a family of professional design practices, the Trust’s naturally collaborative approach and embedded design thinking engages our clients and users to deliver valuable outcomes with positive impact. Our experienced and committed engineers, architects, designers, consultants, and strategists work side-by-side creating purpose driven designs for our changing environment.

A force for good

Our trailblazing work, delivered through our brands Expedition Engineering, Useful Projects, Useful Studio, and Thomas.Matthews, is knitted together by four key themes – our Impact Strands:

  • Work for Good
  • More with Less
  • Restore and Adapt
  • Get Set Zero

These strands ensure that we exceed our clients’ needs, champion our communities, and pioneer through design for our planet.

We are proud to join B Corp UK and a growing group of companies around the world that use business as a force for good.

Supporting London Reclaimed

Supporting a local charity this Christmas, providing a springboard into long-term employment.

Image of carpentry with London Reclaimed

This Christmas, Useful Studio and the Useful Simple Trust, are delighted to be supporting local charity London Reclaimed, who provide young disadvantaged people in Southwark with the opportunity of a first job and training, and a springboard into long term employment. They focus on joinery skills and making furniture using reclaimed and sustainable materials; an approach that aligns

We collaborated with London Reclaimed on the Butlers Wharf design competition earlier this year and have seen first-hand the social value they create.

We are a Social Enterprise

What does it mean to be a certified Social Enterprise?

Useful Studio is a certified Social Enterprise (SE), but what does this mean in practice?

Social Enterprises are one of the most exciting and fastest growing parts of the economy. They are business, but not as you know it.

A SE is a business that trades to tackle social problems, improve communities, people’s life chances, or the environment. They come in all sizes, from small community cafés to really big international organisations.

The SE movement is a growing, worldwide network of businesses that exist to change the world for the better. This might sound like charity work, but Social Enterprises are businesses. They make and do things that earn money and make profits like any business. It is how they work and what they do with their profits that is different: working to make a bigger difference, reinvesting the profits they make to do ‘more good’ in communities and across industries.

There are over 100,000 SEs in the UK, employing more than two million people and contributing £60bn to the economy each year.

How to qualify as a Social Enterprise

SE’s must be primarily dedicated to social and/or environmental objectives by:

  • Reinvesting profits into education and research,
  • Donating design skills to projects with a high social cause,
  • Design to minimise the use of resources and maximise the ability for reuse.

One criterion for being a SE is to have a clear mission set out in our governing documents. Our purpose is to blaze a trail in the integrated, intelligent and ethical provision of the human environment.

Collectively, our mission as the Useful Simple Group is to improve the human environment by delivering useful, simple outcomes that are beautiful and good. We are independent with no shareholders, and employee wellbeing is at the heart of our ethos.

What an SE does with its profits is a critical way in which we are distinct from standard businesses. The majority of our profits are reinvested into setting up projects and initiatives to improve our industry as a whole; meeting the Trust’s purpose and our social mission. For example, we played a key role in the birth and development of:

The Great Recovery: a programme that looked at the opportunities of a circular economy,

The Get It Right Initiative (GIRI): a programme to eliminate error and waste in the construction industry,

Constructionarium: a hands-on construction experience for built environment students and professionals where participants construct scaled-down versions of bridges, buildings, dams, and civil engineering projects from all around the world.

Benefits

Procuring SE’s enables clients to do ‘more good’. This means that we can help organisations comply with their own social purpose, as well as comply with the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012. This Act places an obligation on public bodies to consider how the services they commission can improve the economic, social, and environmental wellbeing of their area.

We’re always interested in working with like-minded companies, so if you’d like to find out more about how we can work together, we’d love to hear from you.