Our People

We set a target to achieve a leadership engagement score above 80%, and in our 2024 IIP survey, we were delighted to exceed this with an average score of 84% across leadership-related questions.

At Safestore, colleague engagement begins with creating a culture where people feel valued, supported, and connected. Our leaders play a vital role in fostering this environment, forming genuine connections with their teams and encouraging open, honest communication.

Our ‘Make the Difference’ people forum, launched in 2018, is a formal workforce advisory panel, that enables frequent opportunities for us to hear and respond to our colleagues. Our network of ‘People Champions’ across the Group collates questions and feedback from colleagues across all countries and puts them to members of the Executive Committee.

Our people forum provides a listening culture, ensuring high levels of consultation, innovation, and ideas continue to come from every level. We drive change and continuous improvement in responding to the feedback we receive, via our internal communication channels and back through our network of People Champions.

Wellbeing remains central to our engagement strategy. We offer practical support to help colleagues lead healthier lives, including our popular Medicash health cash plan, which provides access to GP appointments, counselling, and 24/7 emotional wellbeing tools. Additional support is available through our Employee Assistance Programme (“EAP”), partnerships with Mind and Mental Health UK, and private counselling via our occupational health provider.

At Safestore, we invest in colleague development to strengthen customer relationships and drive commercial performance, which is critical to the Group’s strategic progress. In 2025, we delivered over 35,000 hours of training across the Group, c. 40 hours of training per colleague, with an average score of 82% across the ‘Building Capability’ IIP indicator.

Our programmes focus on practical skill building, leadership development, and cross-functional collaboration. In-store colleagues benefit from targeted initiatives such as our Sales Consultant and Store Manager Development programmes, which enhance confidence, capability, and consistency in customer engagement. The Store Manager programme, now in its eighth year, is funded by the Apprenticeship Levy and includes a Level 3 Management and Leadership qualification.

We maintain a coaching culture supported by low colleague-to-manager ratios, enabling leaders to provide regular feedback and foster personal and professional growth. This approach is formalised through bi-annual goal setting and succession planning aligned with our Values and Behaviours framework.

We also support professional development through funded memberships with bodies such as CIPD, ACCA, and RICS.

At Safestore, we are committed to fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace where every colleague feels empowered to bring their full, unique selves to work. Our approach is guided by our core values and underpinned by our Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Strategy, which is designed to ensure that all colleagues are respected, valued, and able to thrive.

Policies and practices

We are committed to providing an inclusive workplace and encouraging and welcoming diversity with zero tolerance of harassment and discrimination.

Our EDI policy covers all aspects of diversity including gender, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, and socio-economic background. We ensure our recruitment, development, and reward practices are fair and free from bias. All colleagues have access to learning and development opportunities, and we provide targeted support for under-represented groups.

We comply with the Equality Act 2010 and all relevant UK legislation, and our approach to data collection is consistent, transparent, and respectful of privacy.

Progress and performance

Our Investors in People Platinum accreditation, achieved for the second time in 2024, reflects our ongoing commitment to a high performing, inclusive workplace. We are proud that:

• Over 84% of colleagues agreed that Safestore is committed to diversity.
• Over 85% stated that we value and respect individual differences.
• Over 90% of colleagues stated that they were aware of our Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion policy.

Our latest gender pay gap is 15.9% (mean) and 9.1% (median). Our median gender pay gap is below the national average of 13.1% (Gender pay gap in the UK: 2024, ONS.gov.uk). Our median ethnicity pay gap is 7.9%. We continue to make progress in attracting more ethnic minority colleagues into our stores and are actively working to increase female representation in under-represented roles.

Further analysis can be found in the 2024 Diversity Pay Gap Report on our website. The report also sets out a range of actions we are taking to help close the gap.

Looking ahead

We recognise that building a truly inclusive workplace is an ongoing journey. We will continue to review and evolve our EDI strategy, set stretching targets, and engage with colleagues at all levels to ensure Safestore remains a great place to work for everyone.

Gender and ethnicity data collection

Our gender data is collected primarily for payroll, tax, and pay gap reporting, as part of our colleague onboarding process, where colleagues are required to supply an answer to the question: “What is your gender as stated on your birth certificate?” However, we appreciate that not everyone identifies as the gender they were assigned at birth. Therefore, in the UK, we have updated our gender data collection forms by adding a supplementary question about gender identity, allowing colleagues to self-identify.

Ethnicity data is voluntarily self-reported by colleagues in the UK via our payroll self-service portal. The data in the table on the following page is as at 31 October 2025. The voluntary section, entitled ‘ethnic group’, uses the Office for National Statistics (“ONS”) ethnicity categories. Colleagues who have not provided data are not included in our calculations. The global landscape for data reporting on ethnicity is complex and, following a review of legal and local considerations, at present we only collect ethnicity data for UK colleagues. Further analysis, including our gender and ethnicity pay gaps and the actions we are taking to close them, can be found in our 2024 Diversity Pay Gap Report on our website.

In line with Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) Listing Rules and best practice, we report annually on the diversity of our Board and Executive Management. As at 31 October 2025, 50% of our Board were women, with at least one senior Board position held by a woman, and at least one Board member from a minority ethnic background. We are committed to meeting or exceeding the FCA’s targets:

• At least 40% of the Board are women.
• At least one senior Board position (Chair, CEO, SID, or CFO) is held by a woman.
• At least one Board member is from a minority ethnic background.

We have also published standardised numerical data on Board and Executive Management diversity by gender and ethnicity below.

Group gender representation at 31 October 2025

	Number of Board members1	Percentage of the Board	Number of senior positions on the Board (CEO, CFO, SID, and Chair)	Number in Executive Management2	Percentage of Executive Management
Men	4	50%	3	7	87.5%
Women	4	50%	1	1	12.5%
Not specified/prefer not to say	-	-	-	-	-

Ethnicity representation at 31 October 2025

	Number of Board members1	Percentage of the Board	Number of senior positions on the Board (CEO, CFO, SID, and Chair)	Number in Executive Management2	Percentage of Executive Management
White British or other White (including minority-white groups)	7	87.5%	4	6	75.0%
Mixed/ multiple ethnic groups	1	12.5%	-	-	-
Asian/Asian British	-	-	-	1	12.5%
Black/ African/ Caribbean/Black British	-	-	-	-	-
Other ethnic group	-	-	-	-	-
Not specified/ prefer not to say	-	-	-	1	12.5%

Notes:

¹The Board self-reports its data.
²Executive Management means the Executive Committee and Company Secretary.

 

At Safestore, we uphold a ‘safety-first’ culture as a core value across all aspects of our business. The health, safety, and wellbeing of our colleagues, customers, and contractors are our top priorities, and we are unwavering in our commitment to fostering a safe, supportive environment for everyone.

We take pride in setting high safety standards that often exceed local and regional regulations. Regardless of the country or territory, we hold ourselves to rigorous benchmarks that ensure consistent safety practices across the Group.

Our approach emphasises sharing best practice and standardising policies to create seamless, robust safety processes throughout our operations. We are dedicated to preventing injuries and advancing our industry-leading safety performance through continuous improvement.

Our progress includes:

• Continuous engagement with our colleagues in developing practical solutions to self-improve working environments.
• Heightened focus on new colleague safety induction training and mentorship, as well as risk management.
• Implementation of Quentic, the new digital health and safety system, providing key safety support functions simultaneously across all territories, informing colleagues’ safety focus with analytics and data.
• Group implementation of recording Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate¹ (“LTIFR”) to assess our safety performance and gauge effectiveness of Company safety management and culture.

We are continually strengthening our safety-focused culture by actively engaging our colleagues in partnership with our leaders. This collaborative approach empowers colleagues to contribute to the development of safety solutions, initiatives, and feedback processes, fostering shared responsibility in identifying and solving safety challenges. In doing so, we aspire to prevent all injuries by creating a zero-incident culture and setting a new goal of a Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate of 5.1 and zero RIDDOR²/Reportable³ Injuries for 2025/26.

Group health and safety statistics

Injuries
The Group’s ability to precisely monitor safety performance was enhanced by the 2024 implementation of Quentic analytics. A substantial 59% reduction in lost time was achieved in 2025, with the LTIFR falling from 8.31 (2024) to 3.36. This improvement reflects a genuine reduction in the number of injuries resulting in lost time.

The observed rise in reported accidents in 2025 is a positive indicator of improved data collection, stemming from the deployment of our new digital system, Quentic. The software simplifies and encourages reporting across the Group, leading to better visibility of incidents, rather than an actual increase in their occurrence.

RIDDOR/Reportable Injuries
No RIDDOR/Reportable injuries of colleagues, Customer, Contractor, and Visitor (“CCV”) were reported for the period.

Construction
We are committed to creating the safest possible workplaces and fostering a culture of safety across all of our construction projects. In every territory, we challenge our colleagues and partners to go beyond minimum standards and embrace our high safety expectations. We are proud to have maintained zero reportable incidents on our construction sites for two consecutive years.

Colleague health and safety

Summary:

• 41 injuries were recorded over the past year.
• Zero reportable accidents/incidents were reported for this period.

Year ended 31 October	2023	2024	2025
Number of colleagues	753	804	858
Number of minor injuries	13	27	41
Number of reportable injuries (RIDDOR/Recordable)	-	3	0
LTIFR per 1,000,000 working hours (Group)	-	8.31	3.36

 

Notes:

¹ Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate per 1,000,000 working hours (Group).
² RIDDOR = Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences (UK only).
³ Reportable = Any work-related injury or illness that results in loss of consciousness, days away from work, restricted work, or transfer to another job. Any work-related injury or illness requiring medical treatment beyond first aid (European countries only).