Investing in our communities 

Each day ScottishPower engages in activities that have a positive impact on society.  It has a long track record of supporting communities by sharing resources and skills of their employees.

ScottishPower regularly contributes to community-based organisations and engages in activities to help address a range of wider issues in the communities where it operates.  This specific voluntary engagement with charitable organisations or activities that extends beyond the companies’ core business is broadly known as Corporate Community Investment.

As part of the Iberdrola Group, ScottishPower uses the London Benchmarking Group Framework to evaluate its Community Investment activity. This framework is used by leading businesses around the world, providing a comprehensive and consistent approach to measuring the real value and impact of corporate community investment to both business and society.

During 2022, ScottishPower voluntarily contributed nearly £12.7m in community support activity, through cash, time, in kind support and management costs associated with running community programmes.

ScottishPower has a significant presence in many communities throughout the UK; from offices, to windfarms, substations and overhead line networks. 

Where possible, it aims to create opportunities for local employment during construction and operations, and throughout the planning stages we will identify and actively promote local supply chain opportunities via in-person or virtual ‘Meet the Contractor’ sessions.

ScottishPower works closely with the UK Government and devolved administrations to develop policy on community engagement and benefit, and to ensure that it observes to all voluntary codes of good practice.

We support various education and training programmes; working with school children, school leavers, apprentices and graduates, to encourage young people to consider studying science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) with a view to pursuing a career in the power sector.

We also educate young people about electrical safety, through our award winning PowerWise programme. PowerWise is a free, interactive teaching resource linked to the English, Welsh and Scottish national curricula, and is available to school teachers to help educate pupils on the importance of staying safe around electricity.

Through our long-term relationship with Cancer Research UK, we have raised over £35 million since 2012 to help bring forward the day when all cancers are cured.  We have an innovative Help Beat Cancer energy tariff through which we make a donation for every month a customer stays on the tariff and we are the Official Renewable Energy Sponsor of the charity’s Race for Life. LBG believes that a successful programme isn’t just about the grants a business provides; it’s about how a workforce is mobilised.  That’s why thousands of ScottishPower employees have shown their support by taking part in Race for Life events across the UK, and hundreds of our employees have helped to take donation calls for Stand Up To Cancer.

ScottishPower employees are at the heart of all of our fundraising activities and last year they raised over £20,000 for Cancer Research UK.   More than £39,000 was given to charities chosen by employees, from fundraising and through ScottishPower’s fund matching programme.  Our staff also gave a further £75,000 to charity through tax efficient payroll giving.

We have a strong culture of employee volunteering across the company, and every employee is offered the opportunity to take one day’s paid leave each year to volunteer.  In 2021, 1,050 members of staff took part in volunteering activities organised by ScottishPower and contributed over 4,800 hours during paid company time. 

As part of the operation of our onshore windfarms we support over 36 community benefit funds; empowering communities spread across the UK to control how this money is spent to best serve the needs of the local area. During 2021, ScottishPower Renewables gave more than £5.8 million to local communities neighbouring its windfarms, bringing the total provided to-date to over £50 million.