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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.

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.

Affirming our commitment to climate action

In line with best practice, we have calculated our corporate carbon footprint and set official science-based targets through the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which aims to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C.

Our near-term net zero company-wide emissions reduction target is to reduce scope 1 and scope 2 GHG emissions by 46% by 2030 from a 2019 baseline year. This is further to measuring and reducing our scope 3 emissions.

Positive impact

By signing up to the SBTi, we have joined the ‘Race to Zero’ (the UN-backed global campaign to take rigorous and immediate action to halve emissions by 2030). Our targets are recognized on the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) website as well as We Mean Business and SME Climate Hub.

We have also joined the B Corp Climate Collective. In doing this we are part of a global community of learning and practice regarding climate action, climate justice and climate advocacy. To elevate what we are doing beyond science-based targets and demonstrate industry leadership, we also signed up to B Corp’s pledge to commit to Net Zero by 2030, which will require us to offset any residual emissions.

As an SME offering professional services, based in rented offices, our corporate carbon footprint is small. Our biggest opportunity to influence carbon reduction is through our design and consultancy work in the built environment. Through our ‘Get Set Zero’ approach, we are supporting all sorts of clients to accelerate their journey to net zero and to design buildings, masterplans and infrastructure projects with low whole life carbon emissions.

1. We will encourage the employees of the Trust companies to assume responsibility for maximising their contribution to the business of that Trust company in their capacity as employees, having regard to the interest of future as well as present employees.
2. We will ensure that employees receive information concerning the major policies and actions of the Trust.
3. The purpose of the Trust is to blaze a trail in the field of integrated, intelligent and ethical provision of the human environment.
4. We will aim to do our projects so that they meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, exemplified by outcomes that are useful, simple, beautiful and good.
5. We will have regard to the benefit of the employees of the Trust companies, where a benefit is something that engenders wellbeing.
6. We will work together across the Trust and with others to achieve the purpose of the Trust.
7. We will aim to provide a stimulating working environment where all can give their best and develop to their full potential.
8. We will actively embrace and seek diversity in both our people and our work.
9. We will educate ourselves and others. To grow the next generation, we will play an active role in framing the educational curriculum, and make time to help deliver it.
10. We will aim to reward employees on the basis of “fair and sustainable” for their field while also recognising their wider collaborative contribution to the Trust.