Environmental commitment
As a professional services business, we believe that the group has a low environmental impact when compared to many other industries. However, we are conscious of the impact we do have on the environment and are committed to making positive changes to minimise this where possible.
We believe the measures required to limit the effects of climate change, including meeting the Net Zero Carbon challenge, are fundamental to our long-term business interests and entirely consistent with our vision and values.
Emission Reduction Targets
A transition plan for the group to meet the UK’s target of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Carbon Reduction Projects
- Targeted reductions in scope 1 and 3 emissions through commencing a transition to ultra-low emission vehicles across the group:
- Ongoing migration of directly contracted energy supplies onto renewable tariffs;
- Continued transition of company car fleet to ultra-low emission vehicles (‘ULEV’) – an increase in 2023 to 36% (20022: 0%);
- Migration of IT services from on-premises servers to a more energy efficient cloud-based solution;
- Updates to all office-based printers and scanner hardware to reduce energy consumption;
- Replacing current IT storage platform with cloud-enabled SSD (Solid State Drive) storage arrays which are more energy efficient, have a smaller footprint and enable more expansion of our data storage as the business continues to grow.
Sustainability group
We have a sustainability group made up of employees from across the business who look to develop and manage our plans to reduce emissions and waste across our office network.
Greenhouse gas emissions (‘GHG’) statement
During the year, the group’s overall emissions have increased reflecting the increase in scale of the group and its operations, together with a return to normal operations after the lockdown impacts in 2022 and 2021.
The comparative emissions data for 2020 reflects the operations of the group pre-lockdown. The intensity measures have decreased on the 2020 position with the emissions per FTE reduced by 28% and emissions per £m of revenue reduced by 35%.
- Scope 1 are direct emissions from fuel consumption in either buildings or from company leased or owned vehicles.
- Scope 2 are indirect emissions from purchase of electricity in our offices.
- Scope 3 are emissions from the use of personal or privately- hired vehicles used for company business where employees are reimbursed based on claims for business mileage.
Emissions which result from train travel, flights and taxi journeys are not included in the emissions table.
The carbon dioxide equivalent (‘CO2e’) emissions data for 2022 and 2021 has been calculated using the emission factors from the UK Government’s GHG Conversion.
Factors for Company Reporting 2021 published on 2 June 2021 (2020 using 2019 conversion factors).
John Humphrey
Group Company Secretary
Reporting Year – July 2023