North East commercial law firm Muckle LLP is celebrating after being presented with a number of awards recognising its commitment to the local community. The firm recently won Heart of the Community Award for the Tyneside and Northumberland region at the North East Business Awards. It has also been recognised for its long-term support of local homeless charity, Oasis Community Housing with the charity's Shared Value Award.
Supporting local communities
These recent awards come as the firm celebrates 20 years of its Muckle Charitable Fund. Every year, it makes a donation of 1% of its annual profits to the fund, which awards grants to a wide variety of charities and community groups that support young people, tackle disadvantage and improve social mobility. So far, the firm has awarded over £668,000 in grants to nearly 600 charities for the benefit of people across the North East. One of those charities is Oasis Community Housing who have received support in the form of grants, fundraising and volunteering. Hazel Ditchburn, Corporate Relationships Manager for the charity said: ”We treasure our long-standing relationship with Muckle, which goes beyond a typical corporate partnership. ‘
‘We could not have managed to continue delivering critical services without the generous support of valued corporate partners like Muckle and the dedicated individuals who work there.”
Hugh Welch, Senior Partner at Muckle, said: ”Our contribution to the wider North East community is something that matters hugely to all of us at Muckle; it is one of our major passions and drivers. ”Care is one of our core values: care for our community, our people and clients. It’s wonderful to win awards and to have this public recognition of what we are doing, but what we’re really hoping to achieve is to have a real impact on the community we live and work in and use our voice to highlight the great work that’s being carried out.”
Making a bigger impact
As the firm celebrates the 20-year anniversary of its fund, it is looking to take its commitment to being a responsible business to the next level. It recently launched its revised ESG strategy, which strives to deepen the firm’s impact around helping those who are disadvantaged, becoming Net Zero by 2030 and leading the legal sector with the highest standards.
Hugh said: ”Our aim is to further develop our strategic ambition beyond simply ensuring we are not doing harm to developing ways in which our business can be great and create even better social value. ”So whilst we’ll continue with all the great work we’ve been doing over the last 20 years, moving forward we will be looking at other ways to make an impact such as awarding larger, more strategic grants that can help make a measurable difference.
”Achieving B-Corp accreditation is one of our strategic goals for 2022. Becoming an accredited B-Corp would make it crystal clear to everyone in the business and to our clients that Muckle has chosen to put its values right at the heart of its business.
