Jennings becomes first first business park manager to become a B Corp

Published by

Peter Davison

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Jennings, owners and managers of Monument Business Park in Chalgrove, Oxfordshire have become the first business park manager in the world to achieve B Corp status.

B Corp is a global community of more than 5,000 businesses that meet the highest verified standards of social and environmental performance, ethical standards, and responsibility.

In order to certify, each business must go through a rigorous assessment and verification process.

The objective of every B Corp is to create a better way of working and have a positive impact.

Their mantra is ‘Business as a force for good’. Instead of concentrating on a single bottom line of making profits only for shareholders, B Corp businesses adopt a Triple Bottom Line approach considering people, planet, and profit.

Before becoming certified each business is asked to show detailed proof of their commitment across five keys areas: the environment, community, their workforce, governance, and customers.

Chris Williams, Eco Champion at Jennings, said: “We’re thrilled to bits. Monument Park is home to over 80 small businesses with 500 people working here.

"We’re not the usual type of commercial landlord because for us it’s all about the people.

"We’ve always been about so much more than just running a business park and do our best to create a home for businesses.

"That’s meant putting people at the heart of all our decision making.

"We believe it’s this people powered approach that’s led us to achieving B Corp status and it’s why we want to use our announcement to say a huge Thank You to all the wonderful people who helped us get here.

This approach is already recognised, as one of their suppliers wrote “This is what makes you guys stand out way and above your competition…You truly do set the standards for others to follow.”

Paul Mabbutt, Managing Director of Jennings said: “This is a key milestone in recognition of our journey of building a responsible, values-led company that thinks beyond profit.

"It builds on our becoming a net zero carbon business last year too which was another big step forward for us.

"At the heart of what we do is the commitment we have to care about each other”.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.