Stelrad – Local Support Programme

Stelrad has always had a desire to support local charities, organisations and individuals. As the major employer in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, it has taken its responsibilities as a local employer very seriously and has a group of employees that meet regularly to consider requests for help and support.

Amongst its on-going involvements are regular support through a range of initiatives for local children’s hospice – Bluebell Wood, near Sheffield. The company runs regular events and supports the Hospice’s fundraising initiatives in many ways. Most recently it has organised a charity football match which raised a total of £1700 for the charity with a raffle run within Stelrad’s offices and manufacturing centre for prizes that included tickets to Yorkshire Cricket Club, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday matches. They have supported the charity’s ‘Bag it up’ campaign for several years, with employees bagging up bric-a-brac and unwanted gifts to be sold in the charities Charity Shops in South Yorkshire.

The company has an annual walk event in August that sees a number of employees undertaking a substantial sponsored walk – this year they walked the Northumberland Coastal Walk – 34 miles from Beadnall to Berwick-upon-Tweed – raising more than £1300 which as a matter of course was doubled by the company making the total given to the hospice £2700.

Stelrad try to provide support to many locally based sportspeople including young sportsmen and women who need help to participate in national and international competitions. The most recent of these has been supporting a young man starting his career in motorsport. James Taylor is a promising driver in the Ginetta Junior Championship. Stelrad has provided support to help him participate in the qualifying competitions up and down the country.

For many years, Stelrad has sponsored and supported the annual local Montagu Hospital Comforts Fund Cup Final over the Easter Bank Holiday, providing support for a regular donation to provide equipment for the local hospital that cannot be funded by the hospital itself.

Every year, Stelrad supports the local radio station TRAX FM’s Toy Appeal with Stelrad employees bringing in toys for underprivileged children in South Yorkshire – the aim is to ensure that every child has a Christmas present to open.

In addition, the company itself is supportive of local organisations and charities. In 2016, it gifted its substantial sports ground to local football team Mexborough Rangers. The club had been using the ground for a while but needed the security of a permanent ‘home’ to provide security to the development of the many age groups learning the game and playing regular competitive football. Stelrad gave the ground to the club allowing the club through its ownership to apply for grants and funding from the FA to make the ground safe and free from the levels of vandalism it had suffered over many years.

This year – 2019, as a mark of their gratitude, the club has named the ground ‘Stelrad Park’ in perpetuity, and Stelrad has again sponsored several of the age groups football kits. Stelrad has regularly supplied radiators free of charge to a range of charities. It has regularly provided radiators on request to the BBC TV programme DIY: SOS. The latest of these was for a programme covering the provision of decent living accommodation for a family near Truro in Cornwall. And very recently it has supplied free radiators for the conversion of an old farm building as new residential accommodation for local people in the Okehampton area of Devon, for the Gilead Foundation – an organisation that provides residential rehabilitation for individuals suffering from drug and alcohol addiction issues, self harm, depression and other mental health problems. This is a link first established in 2015 and continued to this day.

These are just a few of the on-going charitable involvements that Stelrad and its employees are involved in on a regular basis. It highlights how important the altruistic elements of the work they do are and how important the company takes its local involvement in its own community. Whilst this entry highlights activities during the past two years as the criteria allow this is something that has been on-going for many years and simply highlights the on-going tradition of Stelrad and its employees to contribute regularly to the needs of their local communities in South Yorkshire particularly, and the wider UK in general.

Both teams in the recent charity match for Bluebell Wood pose for the camera!