Guiding Principles:
- To comply with, and exceed where practicable, all applicable legislation, regulations and codes of practice.
- To integrate sustainability considerations into all our business decisions.
- To ensure that all staff are fully aware of our Sustainability Policy and are committed to implementing and improving it.
- To minimize the impact on sustainability of all office and transportation activities.
- To make clients and suppliers aware of our Sustainability Policy, and encourage them to adopt sound sustainable management practices.
- To strive to improve our sustainability performance.
Practical Steps In order to Put These Principles into Practice
Travel and Meetings
- Walk, cycle and/or use public transport to attend meetings, site visits etc, apart from in exceptional circumstances where the alternatives are impractical and/or cost prohibitive.
- Include the full costs of more sustainable forms of transport in our financial proposals, rather than the least cost option which may involve travelling by car or air.
- Avoid physically travelling to meetings etc where alternatives are available and practical, such as using teleconferencing, video conferencing or web cams, and efficient timing of meetings to avoid multiple trips. These options are also often more time efficient, while not sacrificing the benefits of regular contact with clients and partners.
- To reduce the need to travel to meetings and elsewhere, and facilitate regular client contact, we will provide free training webinars to clients to attend at any time.
- Reduce the need for our staff to travel by supporting alternative working arrangements, including home working etc, and promote the use of public transport by locating our offices in accessible locations.
Purchase of Equipment and Consumption of Resources
- Minimize our use of paper and other office consumables, for example by double-siding all paper used, and identifying opportunities to reduce waste. As far as possible arrange for the reuse or recycling of office waste, including paper, computer supplies and redundant equipment.
- Reduce the energy consumption of office equipment by purchasing energy efficient equipment and good housekeeping.
- Seek to purchase electricity from a supplier committed to renewable energy. Seek to maximize the proportion from renewable energy sources, whilst also supporting investment in new renewable energy schemes.
- Ensure that timber furniture, and any other timber products, are recycled or from well-managed, sustainable sources and are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.
- Purchase fair-trade and/or organic beverages.
- Use IT and Cloud Based Providers who promote sustainable practices within their operations and are ensuring green energy consumption is used as widely as possible
- Where possible use 2nd hand or refurbished equipment to promote the circular economy and increase the lifespan of equipment vs buying new.
Working Practices and Advice to Clients
- Undertake voluntary work with the local community and / or environmental organizations and make donations to seek to offset carbon emissions from our activities.
- Ensure that any associates that we employ take account of sustainability issues in their advice to clients.
We are committed to reviewing our policy and procedures annually. This policy was last reviewed in January 2024.