Helping a city to heal

All corners of the community were quick to respond, including many of our locally-based colleagues. Claire Handby’s nine-year-old daughter had wanted to go to the Ariana Grande concert that day but, thankfully, they couldn’t make it. This left Claire even more determined to help.

“Seeing the terrorism in my city, I hoped I could do something practical for the organisations dealing with the aftermath,” explains Claire, a director in our Manchester Financial Advisory Real Estate office. “I thought the best way was to make my programme management skills available.”

She soon discovered that a trustee of the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund was searching for local Deloitte support. Twenty-two lives were lost that day and more than 150 people had been injured, and urgent assistance was needed to analyse and categorise casualty data from several sources, including the emergency services, hospitals and the British Red Cross.

With a greater understanding of the fatalities, and the different injuries and trauma suffered, the fund could allocate the £18 million generously given in donations.

Claire was able to find the right people with the right skills and, for four weeks from July, the work took place on a pro-bono basis. It meant the money raised could go to those most in need as quickly as possible.

“This shows how personal our work is sometimes,” says Claire. “There is no greater purpose than being able to help people in their time of need and our client confirmed that we really made a difference. It was an honour to be able to use our skills and the resources within Deloitte to support the client and community in this way. It’s an experience we will never forget.”