Our employees are proud to be serving the communities in which they live and work. Many employees demonstrate their commitment through volunteering their time and energies to local community activities.

In the US, for instance, we have a partnership with United Way, which provides clothing, food and services to support some of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. Each year, almost half our US employees get involved in raising money for them. In 2010, our employees raised $2 million which, when combined with a contribution from us, made a grand total of $3 million donated to United Way.

We are involved in a wide range of community programmes in the UK and the US which fit into three themes: developing skills in the next generation; managing energy resources and the environment; and, being an active citizen in our local communities. The following are just a few examples of those programmes in the US.

Education

We are committed to City Year, one of the leading youth-service organisations in the US. It is an inspiring programme where teams of young people who have just left education give a year of service to their community by acting as mentors to young people at risk of dropping out of education. Not only do we help fund the scheme, our employees also support teams of young people, ‘mentoring the mentors’. In September 2010, we extended our support of City Year to London.

Energy and the environment

The Green Education Foundation is a national programme which we support in Boston. Hundreds of thousands of students learn about the science of energy and conservation strategies, and how to assess how energy efficient their classrooms and homes are.

Community investment

1,200 of our employees in the US took part in Earth Day in 2010, with activities themed around energy and the environment.

Working with Communities and Employee Volunteering

Some of the ways we are working with our local communities and developing our employee volunteers

City Year London (UK)
Student gas safety campaign (UK)
Earth day 2010 (US)
City Year (UK & US)
Environmental education centres (UK)
Young offenders programme (UK)

We have a big job to do to help create the energy infrastructure for the future. In Britain that involves major construction projects. We consult widely on how best to deliver our plans, now more often and earlier than ever before.

From holding meetings in inner-city London to telling people our plans for the Power Tunnels Project to rewire the capital, to our mobile exhibit touring Mid Wales to discuss the proposed connections to the new wind farms in the area, we are out and about in communities talking about our plans.

The consultation process

Three to five years before a new project starts, we hold consultations in the local community to explain the options and the reasons for investing in new infrastructure.

We encourage feedback and respond to any comments and questions. We consider all the issues, from environmental factors and protecting areas of outstanding natural beauty, to safety and disruption, and to costs and the engineering and technical demands.

We then put forward our preferred option and ask for more feedback.

Following that, we present a recommendation to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who is responsible for the final decision. During that process, the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), will also have made recommendations to the Secretary of State. We welcome the role the IPC plays, as building an infrastructure to meet the energy needs of the 21st century is a national programme of huge importance.

We then continue to work with the community in the run-up to and during the construction phase. We try to keep disruption to a minimum, and we provide updates on, and answer any questions on, how the project is progressing.

Our relationship with the communities we have construction projects in are important to us, so we also invest in community projects in those areas. When a construction project is completed, we want to leave a positive legacy of our presence there as well as putting in place a significant piece of the national infrastructure which will be vital to delivering energy well into the future.