June 2010

Oxford Wood Recycling has been named Overall winner of the European Social Firm of the Year 2010 by Social Firms Europe.

Oxford Wood Recycling creates jobs and training opportunities for those with disabilities and the long-term unemployed. It aims to reduce, reuse and recycle wood and timber - helping to reduce the amount of 'waste' wood currently sent to landfill. Started 5 years ago, OWR meet an environmental and social bottom line and have almost tripled their turnover in 3 years without any subsidies. Though small, they are highly effective.

Richard Snow – Chief Executive , said " We're delighted to have won this award for our staff, who own and control the business. We are a small business that sees the value in giving opportunity to people who have been out of work for a long time, often through illness. The company benefits hugely from their skills and experience, the workers benefit from worthwhile employment in an exciting environmental business, and the taxpayer benefits from savings in benefits for unemployment , disability and incapacity. We may well have beaten off some very worthy competition by showing our sustainability in being totally independent of grant funding. If David Cameron wants some ideas for the ' Big Society', we'd be pleased to show him around our warehouse at Milton Park! "

NCWRP would like to add its congratulations to Oxford Wood Recycling for winning such a fantastic award. We are really happy for you all and hope this leads on to bigger and better things, keep up the good work!

www.oxfordwoodrecycling.org.uk

NCWRP is named UK's fastest growing social enterprise

The NCWRP came out top on the recently compiled RBS SE100 fastest growing social enterprise index. We were also narrowly pipped to the post of being named the inaugural RBS SE100 growth champion at a prestigious awards ceremony in London on June 9th. We would like to congratulate Mow & Grow for deservedly winning the growth award, and also congratulate the FRC Group, and the Create Foundation for winning the impact and trailblazers awards respectively. Our congratulations also go to the other nominated social enterprises, and our thanks go to Social Enterprise magazine and the RBS as well as all the other partners and sponsors involved. But what is the RBS SE100 all about I hear you say? Read on for a quick explanation...

 

 

 

 

Reem Hamid, Sarah Lucas, and Ali Walmsley celebrate NCWRP nomination in the fastest growth section at the RBS SE100 awards ceremony at London's Garden Museum, June 9th 2010

There are currently 55,000 social enterprises in the UK with a combined turnover of £27bn, according to government figures. Impressive - yet research for the Cabinet Office revealed in 2008 that although the idea of business with a social purpose chimes well with many audiences, these statistics stand largely alone. Very few people actually know that social enterprises exist and those who do often misunderstand the concept.

Social Enterprise, the UK's only magazine dedicated to the sector, in partnership with RBS, has developed the RBS SE100 Index to forge a better understanding, within the sector and amongst the wider public, of the organisations that identify themselves as social enterprises in the UK.
Click here to read the full report
RBS SE100 website link

Other news

A big welcome to Cambridge Wood Works who opened their doors for business on 1st March and have already begun collecting from one of our big, national builders Kier. Good luck to directors David Ousby and Andy Burston and everyone else involved at Cambridge Wood Works.

Wrap/REalliance our existing funders are supporting us for a further year. They have awarded us a grant of £59,600 for 2010 – 2011 – with targets to significantly increase the tonnes of wood that we (as a network) divert from the waste stream, and to set up six additional community wood recycling enterprises. Fortunately our business plan for the year results in us being financially sustainable by March 2011, so (hopefully) we will no longer be reliant on grants.

Many congratulations to Tristan and Liz at Somerset Wood Recycling on the birth of their beautiful daughter, Roxanne. As you can see from the photo (below) she is already a keen supporter of wood recycling!











Roxanne – the smallest (certainly the cutest!) wood recycler yet!

 

In 2009 between them the network saved a whopping 5053.2 tonnes of wood from landfill. Even more impressive, over 27% of it was in the “reuse” category. Hopefully this year we should break the 8000 tonnes mark!

2009 was a record year for volunteering at the wood recycling enterprises as well - with a total of 13279 volunteer days contributed.

Members Survey

NCWRP would like to say a big thank you to all our members for completing the 2010 NCWRP survey. It follows on from a survey we published in June 2009 and so we look forward to giving you all a picture of how the network has changed over the past 12 months. It appears that most NCWRP members have made it through these recessionary times quite well, and we have also welcomed 3 new members to add weight to our collective efforts to 'upcycle' wood from the waste stream.

This year’s survey has been carried out, compiled and written up by Shaan Sahonta, a Masters student from The University of Brighton who is doing an internship with us. She has done a great job in her 3 months with us and we wish her the best of luck for the future. The completed survey will be ready to publish soon, so we hope that you will enjoy reading it, please give us any feedback about it and give us suggestions so that we can improve it for next year.

Modernisation Fund Research

With cash from The Modernisation Fund, the NCWRP commissioned research by an independent consultant into the pros and cons of how we have promoted and disseminated the community wood recycling model over the last few years.

The full report is available to any of our network members, but the upshot of it is that our decision to provide the model and high levels of support to entrepreneurs for free has been vindicated. The report praises the work of the NCWRP – calling our achievements “impressive” and says that we have inspired and supported in a manner that is unique and highly effective”.

Future Jobs Fund and the Green Jobs Partnership

NCWRP heard a few months ago that the consortium bid we had put in to the DWP to become a provider of Future Jobs Fund jobs had been successful. Our contract led by The Aspire Foundation together with the Community Recycling Network, Furniture Recycling Network and ReAlliance was to enable members of our networks to employ 90 young people on 6 months contracts with their salaries coming from the Department of Work and Pensions. A few of our members - Somerset, Oxford, St. Albans, Chiltern, Brighton -  are currently either employing staff through this scheme, or in the process of doing so, but sadly this scheme has fallen victim to the new governments cuts. However, it will be replaced by 'The Work Programme' but no details of what this will entail have been released yet.

Jan 2010

Award of £10,000 from the Modernisation Fund
We have been awarded £10,000 by the Fund which has been set up to assist “collaborative working” between not-for-profit organisations with a view “to help them develop strategies to prosper during the economic downturn”.

We will be spending the money on developing a bespoke software package to streamline the administration of the collection service our Members provide to the largest construction firms, and on researching what other services our members and new ”franchisees” would benefit from.

November 2009

Best Month Ever For the National Builders Scheme
November 2009 was the best month yet for the NCWRP and for those members that participate in the National Builders Scheme! Income from the month totalled nearly £25,000, with nearly 1500 yds³ of wood collected from 30 sites. This compares with the picture just 7 months ago in April when the scheme netted £7000 from 8 sites.

With even more of the country’s greatest builders coming on board, (we’ve recently carried out or first collections from Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Kier, Leadbitter and Mace), the scheme looks set to expand further into 2010 – saving so much more wood from the waste stream and providing our members with valuable turnover.

NCWRP – Rapidly Growing Social Enterprise
In a recent edition of the prestigious Social Enterprise magazine the NCWRP was named as the 3rd fastest growing social enterprise in the country. Our family of community wood recyclers has a turnover of more than £1,300,000! Congratulations to everyone for contributing to this milestone!

January to June 2009

New Project Opens Up!
In March the Chiltern Wood Recycling Project based in High Wycombe opened its doors for business. This further expands the coverage we can offer to our national builder clients particularly into East Berkshire and West London. Welcome and good luck to directors Ken Amass and Andy Hicks and everyone at the enterprise.

National Builders Scheme Expands
A record 7 new builders have joined the scheme with first collections from their sites taking place in the last few months. They are Beardwell Construction, Castleoak, Laing O’Rourke, Moores Furniture, Rok, Taylor Wimpey and Warings. Hopefully this is the start of long and fruitful partnerships with all of them.

NCWRP wins University of Brighton Award
In the Research and Innovation Awards 2009, the Student and Graduate award for Social Enterprise was won by the NCWRP for our work towards developing an online catalogue of recycled wood products.
The winning team consisted of Aneta Smaga (an NCWRP intern), Alasdair Walmsley (our assistant Director) and Stewart Walton (the products designer at the Hastings and Bexhill Wood Recycling Project). The award carried a prize of £2,000 which was used to fund Aneta’s work with us over the summer.

July to December 2009

NCWRP Moves to New Office
After our recent nomadic past the NCWRP has settled in August in a lovely new office in East Street, Brighton. This move should give us the room and facilities to push forward with our objectives of expanding the national builders scheme to provide more work for the wood recycling projects and actively finding entrepreneurs to expand the network of community wood recycling enterprises.

Richard Mehmed  - Eco Hero
Richard Mehmed, the founder of the NCWRP, recently featured on the Eco Hero page of the Telegraph magazine describing the setting up and development of the first wood recycling project in Brighton and the inception of the NCWRP.