Exclusive Collection interim impact statement April 2023

October 2021 — September 2022

Impact Statement

The little things

Danny Pecorelli Managing Director Exclusive Collection

As we strived to bring normality by filling the hotels after the pandemic, the path was never straight forward: we faced restrictions on the numbers who could gather and many of our workers have moved to other countries for new opportunities.

The extent of running a collection of hotels goes far and wide; from the bedrooms our business and leisure travellers call home for a night or two, our restaurants, bars and outdoor dining spaces, the meeting rooms where the big decisions and the creative ideas are made, to the spas where relaxation and forgetting the daily routine is the only thing on the day’s agenda!

We have a team of more than 1000 people in permanent and casual roles who are responsible for making sure a visit to one of our six estates is an amazing experience.

Over the past year everyone within Exclusive’s family has had a say on how and where we can harness the power of small wins.

We’ve had our graduates leading the charge in some key areas. We value Gen-Zs drive for change, their cultural outlook and their relevance to tomorrow’s guests, members, and team.

We’ve had focus groups and supply partner events and we’ve paid close attention to our clients’ insights to help us consider our supply chain, output, and impact... every single voice has counted and resulted in assured change.

When we started our B Corp journey, we were aware that any improvements would be through small adaptions what we like to call “the little things”, and a constant focus on finding new ways to do business better.

Since we launched the channel we’ve had hundreds of posts on Hubbub, our internal app for communications.

Part of our commitment is to spread the word and we got involved in the London B Corp corner shop pop up and many of our supply partners and even guests have followed suit and have now started their journey to becoming B Corp Certified. We’ve also achieved touching commendations from our colleagues in the hospitality sector.

This past year, as the hotels came back to full swing after the pandemic, our efforts have been tuned to bettering our policies, procedures and using metrics to track our impact on the areas we identified as a priority at the outset of our B Corp journey:

Every action and new practice has enabled improvements and point by point we get better and through B Corp’s measurable framework we’re achieving change. Subtle changes in the first 12-months, but more importantly continued change that will build momentum in the future.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Events

Many of our partners have embraced our outlook, have championed their own change, and have helped us embed practices that permeate into the wider supply network.

For our live event clients, we’ve collaborated with event:decision to help formalise the processes corporates undertake to plan, deliver, and track the impact of their events.

We’ve implemented Klimato for catering at events which helps calculate, reduce, and carbon label our delegate menus.

Many of our partners have embraced our outlook, have championed their own change, and have helped us embed practices that permeate into the wider supply network.

Bedrooms

In our bedrooms we’ve swapped many items from being single use plastic to recyclable including coffee pods, water bottles, tea bags and milk bottles. South Lodge and Pennyhill Park have both implemented plastic free vanity sets too.

We’ve also changed our in-room biscuit provider to Island Bakery due to the bakery’s credentials.

We’ve requested to our laundry supplier that any newly laundered sheets and robes have all plastic coverings removed from them.

Our empty loo roll holders are proving invaluable in our kitchen gardens as seed trainers!

Kitchens

In the kitchens we’re trialling cling film with 100% biodegradable food wrap that is eco-friendly and contains no microplastics and best of all can degrade and compost on our own grounds.

Where we can, we use OLIO for any unused food that is left over from hosting events. We’ve helped more than 200 families with meals from food that would have been unnecessarily sent to waste.

Our South Downs bottled waters are better for the environment. The glass bottle has a lower impact when it comes to recycling and the South Downs are on our doorstep thereby minimising transport.

We even collect any water from the halfused bottles in bedrooms or meeting rooms and transfer it to water butts for use around our estates.

BC SoftWear, our spas textile and flipflop supplier has partnered with waste management organisation, First Mile, as well as ethical textiles recycling business, Reskinned, to give us an even greater depth of sustainability.

While First Mile arranges the collection of discarded flip flops from Pennyhill Park and South Lodge in ultra-low emission electric vehicles, Reskinned then links waste management with new technology to recycle the flips flops, so they can be turned into surfaces for children’s playgrounds or equine menage.

Spas 2000

We’ve flipped the flop of discarding around 2000 of these items a month to create quite a positive bounce back!

Supply chain

We have commercial relationships with a huge range of suppliers to help service our bedrooms, kitchens, gyms, spa, grounds, and gardens. As we know that every conversation can result in change, we’ve put considerable work into learning from, collaborating with and supporting this community so that they too can start to support or replicate B Corp commercial ethics.

Through our procurement department we’ve kick-started some of our partners to re-evaluate their own processes and procedures, however large or small their actions are, to add to the bigger impact and our B Corp voice.

We’ve seen our long-term supplier partners OLIO and Ridgeview Wine Estate become certified and our chocolate partner Montezuma’s is on the journey too. Over the past year, we’ve made more than 400 of our suppliers aware of our new rules of engagement.

After all, every conversation counts and is supporting change.

What we’ve achieved

Propping up mid-morning munchies with Propercorn

Gin’oclock with Botanist Gin

Relaxed in safe hands in the spa with Comfort Zone

Setting up the day with B Corp, Alpro

Afternoon tea with a good dollop of clotted cream from fellow B Corp, Rodda

What we’ve achieved

Giving back to the community

Hospitality Action

Hospitality Action supports all those who are and who have worked in the diverse business of hospitality. The charity supports everyone, whatever their challenge, giving support to enable each individual to have a positive outcome. Their Hospitality Employee Assistance Program has been a lifeline for many in our industry.

Protect Earth

Protect Earth partners with landowners to plant trees on their land to increase tree cover in the UK, removing carbon from the atmosphere, reducing the risk of flooding during heavy downpours, and enhancing air quality. With more than 500 acres across our businesses we are well placed to plant more, sensitively rewild our grounds and ultimately support better air, healthier soil, cleaner water, and more biodiverse systems.

Monies raised at our hotels have exceeded £40,000 and has been split between their respective chosen charity.

We’ve made distinct cut throughs with our policies and now donate 2% of our profits to charity. Our company wide chosen charities are Hospitality Action and Protect Earth.

the on-site team:

Lainston House supports Trinity Winchester, a local charity which helps people who are vulnerable to the effects of homelessness, addiction, physical and mental ill health to offer solutions, hope, choice, and control.

South Lodge has nominated Chestnut Tree House, who provide care for children with life limiting illnesses, as its charity partner.

Pennyhill Park champions Camberley All Night Café which provides food and health and wellbeing services for local people in need.

The Manor House support Alzheimer’s Support Wiltshire to help people live well with dementia.

Royal Berkshire’s team are raising money for Sebastian’s Action Trust to help families with seriously ill children.

Fanhams Hall are behind Always Be You and are raising funds for adults with learning disabilities.

We’ve also donated excess items with 90 duvets from South Lodge recently given to Lyndhurst Foodbank who were arranging a transfer to Lviv, Ukraine. Since Christmas is such a huge time for hotels, we felt it was only right to raise money for Crisis at this time of goodwill to all. We raised £6,300 for the charity.

Every hotel can also nominate a charity of their own choice to help support their local community or a cause that has had a profound effect on

What we’ve achieved

Diversity, equity and inclusion

The hospitality sector has faced unprecedented change in the last few years and has allowed us to reconsider and reframe our own policies to recruit, develop and retain likeminded people.

Since we were founded forty years ago, we’ve had a strong ownership on the welfare and development of our people and have become recognised as one of the UK’s foremost hospitality brands to work for through our apprenticeship schemes, Chefs Academy and Graduate Programme.

With many streams of our business returning back to form, such as meetings and events and business travel, we’ve had to increase our headcount to service the demand. New roles mean that we are in turn helping our local communities by providing well remunerated opportunities.

At senior leadership level, we’ve increased female representation both on property and at exec level and over 50% of our director level roles are now led by females.

A contented team makes for happy guests, and we draw on the many voices and outlooks across our diverse team to help create our reward and recognition programme, as well as to share ideas around B Corp. We start as we mean to go on and through the use of technology, we have formalised our on-boarding and on-going comms across the hotels and across the teams. And with quarterly face-to-face meetings for each hotel, we are confident that everyone is engaged and involved in our journey to make our business a force for good.

What we’ve achieved

Carbon road map

One of our biggest initiatives is to work with Land App and to use our estates and landscapes as an opportunity to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and help preserve the environment around us. Making use of Land App brings technology and nature together and has helped us to plan and protect the legacy of our landscape and secure its future. Each estate has been surveyed, mapped, and planned to help us better understand each location’s habitats and to promote our stewardship of our local countryside and wider environment.

We’ve recently put in planning permission to increase our bedroom stock. Rather than extending the existing building, we’ve opted for eco lodges which have a low ecological footprint and use as many natural materials as possible and have high insulation values.

We’ve been carrying on the good work we started when we were founded 40 years ago. We recognise that we are guardians of some beautiful country houses and estates, and it is our responsibility to protect them for future generations.

Tamara Roberts Chief Executive Officer Ridgeview ridgeview.co.uk

Across our properties we’ve 30 electric vehicle chargers for guests and employees and our golf buggies used on the courses and around the properties are all strictly electric too.

In Castle Combe at the Manor House, one of our most historic hotels, we’ve added solar panels to the golf clubhouse and on the green keepers’ buildings we’ve installed 160 solar panels to help power a new fleet of buggies. Figures suggest this installation alone will stop the release of 11,507kg of carbon dioxide per annum.

Down the road at the Castle Inn, we’ve moved from away from fossil fuels entirely by installing induction hobs in the kitchen.

And at Pennyhill Park, a new boiler is bringing 26% better efficiencies. These marginal gains are adding to our score and most importantly are enabling us to reduce our impact on the planet.

Our graduates, the voice of ours and the hospitality sectors’ future, have helped steer many of the projects focussed on reduce, reuse, and recycle. In the coming year they will continue their pursuit to reduce all of our single use plastics and to eliminate any food waste going to landfill.

It is a rare privilege to be working with another family led company who shares so many of our strongly held values and our vision for the future responsibilities of businesses to do the right thing socially, economically, and environmentally.

What we’ve planned

Commitment for 2022-23

With our roadmap set, our people engaged and our message gathering pace amongst our wider community, we know that every conversation counts.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

We recently made Botanica at South Lodge a dairy free dining destination and will see the outcomes over the coming months. Based on the success of our Wasted Burger we’re now punching to make Botanica an entirely waste free restaurant!

We’re teeing up to eliminate all single use plastic from the Manor House Golf Club by May 2023. This would be the first single use plastic free golf course in the UKanother first for us.

As we spend a significant amount of time sprucing, decorating and refurbishing the hotels we’re moving to a sustainable paint supplier.

Diversity, equity and inclusion

We will be adopting a more friendly narrative to DEI and refer to ‘Belonging’. Belonging to the team, our family business, and our mission to use the business as a force for good.

One of the boldest steps we will take is to become accredited as a real Living Wage Employer.

Supply chain management

We will continue to share our story and encourage our peers to join the B Corp community while each of our properties will be relentless in their pursuit to do business better.

We’re in conversations with Sedex who may be able to supercharge our supply chain through their platform.

Giving

We will look to nominate new local charities and continue our involvement with Hospitality Action and Protect Earth to support and drive our 2% commitment plus activities.

Carbon road map

We will continue on our mission to sequester more including a new six hectare vineyard with our neighbours Ridgeview Wine Estate as well as 1,300 new trees to expand the ancient woodland bordering South Lodge’s estate.

In the coming year we are working towards removing gas from all of our kitchens, swapping every single light bulb to LED bulbs, and will have concluded a Scope 3 calculation of every hotel and ancillary business.

We challenge ourselves to find better ways and more sustainable uses for any capital expenditure.

Since every conversation counts, the half million guests we meet each year will create quite an impact and will help reinforce our mission to make business a force for good.