Royal Patronage: HRH The Prince of Wales (Later King Edward VII) Chairman of the charity at the 50th anniversary dinner at the Guildhall, London, in 1893.

About Us

The Rainy Day Trust is the only charity which exists solely to help people who have worked in the UK’s Home Improvement and Home Enhancement business: DIY Shops, Hardware Stores, Garden Centres, Cookshops, and all the manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers who supply them.

Its life began in 1843 when the first meeting of the ‘Iron, Hardware and Metal Trades Pension Society’ took place in the London Tavern, Bishopsgate Street, London.

The Society was founded to grant pensions to ‘distressed members of the trade and their widows’ who were in the ‘Iron, Hardware and Metal Trades’ – the Victorian terminology for our current Home Improvement and Home Enhancement industries.

Today, with an estimated 1 million eligible current and past employees from the combined home improvements and home enhancement industries, the charity is experiencing a steady, and very disturbing, increase in applications for assistance from colleagues who have for worked for many years in our industry, only to find that their working lives are being tragically cut short due to the unforeseen diagnosis of debilitating diseases.

In order to reflect the charity’s changing responsibilities by providing for that ‘rainy day’ the charity renamed itself the ‘Rainy Day Trust’ in 2004.

The Trust is run by a Board of Trustees representing retailers, suppliers, wholesalers, trade associations and the trade press – all people who are themselves active in the Home Improvement and Home Enhancement industries.