17 January 2013

British Land Helps Raise Almost £115,000 for the British Heart Foundation

36 British Land retail assets across the UK have taken part in the Great British Bag-athon Challenge to help raise money for the British Heart Foundation.

As part of the challenge, donation bags were handed out to retailers and shoppers who were encouraged to fill them with clothes, CDs, DVDs and books.  Bags were then donated to local British Heart Foundation shops with each full bag being worth an average of £20.

For the third consecutive year, British Land was the largest landlord donator with a contribution of 5,496 bags equating to a total of £114,931 being raised including cash contributions.

Jo Hammond, Charity and Volunteering Executive for British Land, said: "As the UK's largest listed landlord, we are delighted to participate in the Great British Bag-athon again this year and to help raise funds for such a worthwhile cause.  We are committed to ensuring our head office and centre management teams support good causes and look forward to working with the British Heart Foundation again next year."

Mike Taylor, Retail Director for the British Heart Foundation, said: "British Heart Foundation shops are delighted with the results from the British Land teams and customers.  It was a tremendous effort and the funds raised will help save the lives of many people in the community.  This year's results alone are enough to fund a major heart research project.  Many thanks to all the teams involved at British Land!"

In total 568,689 bags were donated across the country this year and more than 80 shopping centres and retail parks in the UK were involved in a Bag-athon event.

Enquiries:

Emma Hammond, FTI Consulting 020 7269 9347

Notes to Editors

About British Land
British Land is one of Europe's largest Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) with total assets, owned or managed, of £15.8 billion (British Land share £10.3 billion), as valued at 31 March 2012. Through our property and finance expertise we attract experienced partners to create properties and environments which are home to over 1,000 different organisations and visited by over 300 million people each year. Our property portfolio is focused on prime retail locations and Central London offices which attract high quality occupiers committed to long leases. Our occupancy rate of 98.1% and average lease length to first break of 11.3 years are among the highest of the major UK REITs.

Retail assets account for 61% of our portfolio with around 27 million sq ft of retail space across 89 retail parks, 97 superstores, 12 shopping centres and 10 department stores. The retail portfolio is modern, flexible and adaptable to a wide range of formats and our active asset management delivers space which is attractive and meets the needs of both retailers and consumers. Over 80% of our retail parks have open A1 consent.

London offices, located in the City and West End, comprise 34% of the portfolio (which will rise to an estimated 40% on completion of current developments). Our 7 million sq ft of high quality office space includes Broadgate, the premier City office campus (50% share) and Regent's Place in the West End. We have committed £1.2 billion to create Central London's largest committed office development programme which will deliver 2.3 million sq ft of high quality space by 2014, including a 700,000 sq ft building at 5 Broadgate, the 610,000 sq ft Leadenhall Building in London's insurance district and a 500,000 sq ft mixed office and residential scheme at Regent's Place in the West End.

Managing our environmental, economic and social impacts is central to the way we do business and deliver value for our shareholders. We assess the issues that matter most to us and our stakeholders on an on-going basis and, where appropriate, adjust our strategic focus to reflect this. For the coming year we have adjusted our priorities to focus on managing our buildings efficiently, supporting communities, developing sustainable buildings and engaging our staff. For each of these priorities we are targeting our efforts and resources at initiatives where we can achieve the biggest impacts.

Further details can be found on the British Land website at www.britishland.com.

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