Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Florence House has been welcoming guests since 2004. We are committed to ‘giving something back’ to our clients, business partners, community in Seaford, society and environment.

The FH team have a commitment to Kaizen, the art of continuous improvement. We are aware of the impact our activities have on our clients, our staff, our suppliers and the environment. Our vision is to become the best retreat centre in the South East. We believe that Florence House is ‘a magical place where extraordinary things happen’.
Communication. We will communicate this policy to all the team at meetings and in writing. We will also put information about our CSR activity on our website.

Florence House CSR principles.

We are committed to creating an environment where all staff feel equal and have job satisfaction. This is grounded in our Equality and Discrimination policy
We are committed to supporting local charities and the community
We deal with our suppliers and contractors in a fair and ethical manner.
We are committed to minimising our impact on the environment by adopting best practices with particular focus on energy conservation, water and waste management.
We are committed to treating all our clients equally, ethically, mindfully and without discrimination.

Responsibility

This policy is the responsibility of the General Manager, Steve Walker and the Managing Director, Mairin Colleary, who are also responsible for making sure all staff are aware of its contents and make sure of its effective operation across the organisation.

CSR Activities in the past year

Charitable Activities include:

Supporting The Youth Counselling Project, a local charity, by giving the use of the house free of charge for fundraising events (3 in 2018)
Supporting Seaford Community Cinema by facilitating an outdoor cinema event at Florence House with no charge
Creating a Landshare/allotment community in the Vegetable Garden at Florence House involving 5 different households at no charge
Helping a Syrian Refugee family in Seaford to create an Apiary in the grounds of Florence House and providing a new garden shed free of charge.
Making the Yurt available to the community free of charge and to selected facilitators at a minimal charge
Working with Seaford Tree Wardens to plant 6 disease free Elms on the front drive as part of a project to plant a tree in Seaford for the 140 men of Seaford who died in the first world war.

Environmental Awareness Activities include

Reducing our plastic waste by changing our purchasing policies and requesting plastic free deliveries where possible
Installing a milk pergal in the kitchen to avoid plastic milk bottles
Installing a water filter for use by guests to avoid the purchase of water in plastic bottles
Providing filtered water in Glass bottles in all the bedrooms
Re-cycling all our glass, tin, paper and cardboard via the Lewes recycling schemes
Composting all our waste food products for use in the grounds at Florence House.
Providing extensive clothes lines in the grounds to reduce the use of electrical driers
Installation of new tamper proof thermostats in Florence House to help with energy conservation
Replacing all light bulbs with energy efficient LED lights.
Using scrap paper for internal printing and printing double-sided where possible