News & Updates
Celebrating National Inclusion Week at Marston's
14th September 2026
At Marston's, we believe great hospitality starts with making people feel welcome.
This National Inclusion Week, we're reflecting on the part inclusion plays in creating pubs where our guests, team members and communities can be authentically themselves, while sharing some of the ways our people are putting that into practice.
This year’s theme, ‘Build Trust and Navigate Change’, is a timely reminder that inclusion is built through everyday choices: listening carefully, understanding what people need and responding with care.
Bethan Wheatley, General Counsel & Company Secretary at Marston's, and Co-Chair of our Sustainability Taskforce, said:
"Inclusion is about more than policies and processes - it's about the choices we make every day. Inclusion helps people feel they belong, gives everyone the opportunity to perform at their best and ultimately makes us a stronger business.”
This week, to support this ambition, we are:
- Launching a dedicated takeover of our Campus employee training platform, featuring a best-practice learning journey with handpicked inclusion modules for our pubs, partners and Pub Support Centre teams
- Celebrating an exciting milestone for our pioneering Excel prison leavers programme
- Hearing from trainees on our Supported Internships programme with Landmarks Specialist College, on what the programme has meant to them
- Hosting dedicated learning sessions for our Pub Support Centre colleagues, pubs and partners on emerging inclusion hot topics and changing legislation
We'll also be sharing personal stories from inspiring Values Heroes across our estate that show the benefits of getting inclusion right, including this video from The Still, Lincoln (below), where pub partner Emma Williams and her team made reasonable adjustments to help an autistic guest and her family feel welcome at a recent live music event.
A culture where people can belong
Alongside our guest-facing work, we're working to build a culture where our team members and partners feel represented, heard and supported, through our Come as You Are commitment and Inclusion Networks spanning age, accessibility, culture, ethnicity, religion, LGBTQ+ inclusion, gender, wellbeing and community.
While National Inclusion Week is an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the progress being made across our business, we know that our work in this important area is never finished and must remain a daily focus for our teams.
Whether it's supporting a colleague, adapting to a guest's needs or creating opportunities for people from all backgrounds to succeed, we're committed to ensuring our business and our pubs remain places where everyone feels welcome, valued and able to come as they are.
