Alastair Owen
Communications Assistant
Covent Garden Market Authority

Covent Garden Market Authority is the statutory corporation responsible to Defra for the running of New Covent Garden Market. The market authority joined Activate Your Workplace to pilot workplace health initiatives with up to 30 of the 245 companies across the market, as well as the market authority staff. Once successful interventions and a suitable model for delivery were established, the initial plan was to roll the programme out across the entire market.

During the launch for the programme, it became clear that distinguishing between companies who were involved in the pilot and those who were not would be difficult to maintain. Thus, the pilot was opened to all market staff and popular interventions would be continued regularly after the pilot phase.

The Communications Assistant, Alastair Owen, was selected as a Workplace Health Champion for the pilot as it was felt he would be able to communicate interventions with staff as part of his existing role. He hopes to draw upon the availability of fresh produce from the market to encourage healthy eating in onsite catering facilities. Activity classes including Body Balance, Marshall Arts and Yoga have been planned for 2008 and active travel initiatives will be introduced following the re-development of the site.

In time, it is hoped that New Covent Garden Market will be regarded internally and externally as a market that holds the health of its staff at the core of daily work.