Manchester’s Tier1, has received the King’s Award for Enterprise – Creating Opportunity, which has been awarded for its innovative prison recycling programme located at HMP Hindley.
The innovative prison programme was given royal approval both for its significant contribution to environmental sustainability and the way in which it has facilitated the successful reintegration of prisoners into society.
The re-offending rate for prisoners that have gone through the programme over the last ten years is just six per cent, compared to a national average of 26.1 per cent.
The award was presented to Tier1 by the lord lieutenant for Greater Manchester, Diane Hawkins (pictured front) who told the team that it’s only the eighth award for Promoting Opportunity granted in the UK this year and that it was great to find a local business running a programme of such great value to those in prison.
Jonathan Rose, director and co-founder of Tier1 (pictured front) said: “The HMP Hindley programme isn’t a tick box green initiative that we do just to make ourselves feel good. It’s a programme that has real and long-lasting societal value. To date, the programme has generated over £4.2m in societal savings.
Tier1 works with global organisations to achieve their ESG goals through sustainable, secure and compliant IT lifecycle solutions, which cover the refurbishing, remanufacturing and redeploying or reselling of end-of-life IT equipment. It works with organisations operating in the public, finance and IT sector and saves on average 120,000 laptops and PC’s from ending up in landfill each year.
The prison programme is built around end-of-life IT disposal – with equipment that can’t be refurbished or redeployed sent to the HMP Hindley workshop where it is broken down into components and precious metals that are refined and reused; with proceeds from the recycling contributing to its “Through The Gate” programme.
This though is only the operational element of it. Tier1 provides training to prisoners with an ETCAL Level 2 Certificate in IT Recycling and provides pre- and post-release support, including employability skills, health and wellbeing, housing, employment advocacy, digital connectivity and training and 1-2-1 support.
More than 150 prisoners who have gone through the programme are now in gainful employment, apprenticeships, volunteering and work experience; with several having come out of prison and been employed directly by Tier1.
“Around half of all crime committed is by people who have already been through the criminal justice system – and the cost of reoffending to the taxpayer is estimated to be as much as £18bn per annum,” added Jonathan.
“Our aim, albeit on a small scale, is to reduce this cost by providing education, training, opportunity and support for those in prison so that when they’re released, they have a real chance to move on and build a new, happy, crime-free life for themselves.”
The King’s Award for Tier1 follows on from the business receiving the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2019.
