Winner: Edmonton Green Shopping Centre – Supporting the Community throughout COVID-19, Ashdown Phillips & Partners

What they did

When COVID-19 hit, its impact was disproportionately felt in already deprived areas, one being the area surrounding Edmonton Green Shopping Centre in north London.

The 26-acre Edmonton Green Shopping Centre site in Edmonton, north London, comprises 30 retailers and a market. The property and the wider community scheme in which it sits is run by Ashdown Phillips & Partners through its on-site team of Marie Kyriacou-Edwards (operations manager), Naomi Wainford (operations assistant) and June Tonge (centre administrator), and with Sabri Marsaoui of the centre’s owners, Crosstree Real Estate Partners.

While the team already saw its role as working both to operate the shopping centre and make a positive impact on the community, the pandemic made this role all the more valuable.

The team immediately recognised the need to go beyond its suddenly even more important on-site role, organising and administrating care packages and donations to the wider Edmonton community, not the least of whom were the 2,000 residents living at the heart of the community scheme, many of whom are elderly and living in assisted accommodation.

How they did it

The team contacted more than 20 community groups to organise donations – not only to those in need, but other organisations whose work is to help those in need.

The team purchased items from their on-site retailers to contribute to the community. They made two deliveries a week, including one to Enfield Stands Together, the COVID response organisation set up by Enfield Council and Enfield Voluntary Action, involving local partners and organisations set up to organise volunteers and those who need help.

The Edmonton Green team itself delivered care packages to the many vulnerable local residents who were genuinely touched by their efforts. The team also directly delivered to the various organised groups.

The result

The team has received positive feedback on how the community has been helped through the donations they have made. Importantly, they have both cemented existing relationships in the local community and built new ones. All this while also keeping the shopping centre open with a management team reduced by 50% due to furlough and a vacant position.

The team talk about how FM “often throws up the unexpected,” and how they knew that in the case of Covid-19 they alone couldn’t fix everything. But it’s in the essence of FM to seek to work together and with others to “put smiles on faces and “sprinkle some magic into people’s daily lives”, demonstrating their ongoing goal of putting Edmonton Green Shopping Centre at the heart of the community.

Twitter: @EdmontonGreen1 

Facebook: @edmontongreen

Instagram: @edmontongreencentre 

Twitter: @AshdownPhillips

Instagram: @AshdownPhillips

Linkedin: Ashdown Phillips and Partners Limited