Port Sunlight Village Trust

Who we are

We want to make the village an inspiring place to live, visit and work for everyone.

Port Sunlight was declared a conservation area in 1978. It contains more than 900 Grade II listed buildings in 130 acres of parkland and gardens. It is also home to a thriving community and welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. It is important to strike a balance between the past and the present, which is where Port Sunlight Village Trust comes in.

Port Sunlight Village Trust (PSVT) is an independent charitable trust responsible for preserving and promoting the village. Set up by Unilever in 1999, the Trust works with Port Sunlight’s residents to create a self-sustaining village for all who live, visit and work here.

Our culture and values

As an organisation, Port Sunlight Village Trust (PSVT) aims to ensure our residents, stakeholders and visitors are completely satisfied with the services we provide at all times. We also want to ensure our staff and volunteers are consistently driven by the same values.

Our values are:

• Integrity - You can trust us to do what we say.
• Respect - We value diversity and treat everyone fairly.
• Knowledge - We are always learning and improving.
• Passion - We really care about the past and future of Port Sunlight.
• Creativity - We are problem-solvers and openly share our ideas through
• partnership working. 
• Participation - We put the community at the heart of everything we do.

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

A fuller and more balanced story of William Lever and Port Sunlight’s heritage.

Port Sunlight Village Trust is custodian of an incredibly unique heritage site. Our role is to care for Port Sunlight’s heritage and to use it to inspire, educate and entertain. Respect and knowledge are two of our core charitable values. We prize diversity and aspire to treat everyone fairly; we strive to use our understanding of the past to help benefit the present. The reality of these values was brought into sharp focus by the international outcry against systemic racism, led by the Black Lives Matter movement, following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

We recognise that we have not fully explored the problematic aspects of the business enterprises practised by Port Sunlight’s founder, William Lever, in our museum or public spaces. This simply does not live up to our core values.

We now commit to telling a fuller and more balanced story

We want to meet the challenge of reflecting a broader, unflinching picture of the past, while also tackling inequalities within our own organisation and the wider community. Our aim is to bring new meaning to Port Sunlight’s heritage, encouraging discussion and fresh perspectives in support of positive social change.

We will:

• Piece together and share the history of William Lever’s global colonialist enterprises.
• Examine the harmful impact these business practices have had on communities of the Global Majority, both past and present.
• Highlight and tackle racism in all its forms.
• Act responsively on feedback, as we continue to evolve our anti-racist practice.

We are exploring Port Sunlight’s history to acknowledge our past but, even more importantly, to signal that we are on a journey towards openness, transparency, and the creation of an inclusive local culture for all.