A property company has gone the distance for Birmingham Women’s Hospital Charity, after hosting various fundraisers, including a static cycling challenge, and raising over £14,000 to support its poorly babies.

Birmingham-based Hortons’ Estate Ltd chose Birmingham Women’s Hospital Charity as its dedicated charity of the year for 2022, following a staff vote.

The hospital has recently cared for the granddaughter of a Hortons’ employee, who spent the first weeks of her life in its Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) having been born 10 weeks premature.

With the largest single-site maternity unit in the UK, delivering 8,000 babies every year, Birmingham Women’s Hospital’s NICU often needs to provide vital care for its babies. This includes babies born prematurely, with low birth weight, those who have a medical condition that requires specialist treatment, or babies struggling after a traumatic birth.

As part of its commitment to supporting Birmingham Women’s Hospital Charity, Hortons’ Jane Phillips arranged a dinner for shareholders and guests during which token purple heart charity pin badges were offered in return for donations. The event raised £2,000 for the charity, which was matched by Hortons’ to ensure a final donation of £4,000.

It was followed-up by a static bike challenge at local bar and restaurant, Revolución de Cuba, designed to appeal to the competitive spirit of Birmingham’s commercial property community.

Hortons’ gained sponsorship from generous local companies, sourced luxury raffle prizes and invited business contacts and partners to come along and enter a team in the competition. So enthusiastic was the response, that an incredible £9,300 had been raised before the event had even begun.

Jane said: “The teams had a fantastic time battling it out on the static bikes and we had a terrific turnout of people supporting the event. We’re absolutely thrilled with the amount we raised, especially knowing that the hospital means so much to so many of our team, but we’re not done yet! We hope to raise even more for Birmingham Women’s Hospital Charity before the year is out.”

Dearbhla Craddock, Corporate Partnerships Officer at Birmingham Women’s Hospital Charity, said: “Life-saving work happens on our NICU every day. Since day one of our partnership, Hortons Estates Ltd has shown nothing but commitment to raising vital funds to ensure our colleagues can do their job to the best of their ability. We’ve been blown away by their incredible running total and can’t thank them enough for pledging to do more for our women, babies and families.”