Section 172 Statement
The directors set out their section 172(1) statement in accordance with the Companies Act 2006 in relation to stakeholder engagement for the year ended 30 April 2022.
The board recognises the long-term success of the company is strongly correlated to a positive interaction with all its stakeholders. Effective engagement allows the directors to understand relevant stakeholder views on material issues, which contributes to the board’s decision-making. The directors aim to act fairly and with consideration to all stakeholders in order to maintain a longstanding reputation as a Company where people want to work and a company with whom suppliers and customers wish to trade, whilst ensuring the Company maintains the highest ethical standards and support for its community.
This report identifies some of our key stakeholders and explains how the directors interact with them to promote the success of the Company for the stakeholders.
Employees
The Company’s employees are essential to the delivery of the strategy and the future growth of the business. The directors aim to empower and engage employees throughout the business, encouraging each to solve problems at their own level. The Company strives to develop its people so that it can promote from within and provide long term and fulfilling careers for its employees. During the financial year, the Company has placed an increased focus on staff engagement ideas and activities.
The Company promotes an ‘open’ culture in which employees are encouraged to express their views on the Company’s operations and future developments. Regular meetings are held between managers and employees to allow a free flow of information and ideas. All significant developments within the business are communicated to employees by the directors.
The Company has a long service award scheme, and relevant staff are recognised and rewarded under the scheme. During the year employee turnover was 17.0% compared to 10.7% in the prior year; whilst this shows an increase, it is more in line with the pre covid staff turnover from April 2020 of 15.7%.
Customers
The directors support the business by actively engaging with new and existing customers. The directors strive to develop enduring partnerships with the company’s customers and drive continuous improvement and innovation into its operations. To achieve this, the directors take the time to understand the real and perceived needs of the company’s customers, which they do through maintaining close relations and engaging regularly with customers.
Suppliers
The directors ensure that the company always engages with its suppliers in an ethical manner. The Company works closely with suppliers, because it relies on them to provide products and services which meet stringent quality and performance requirements; this in turn allows the company to fulfil its commitments to customers. This engagement will be at an operational level on a day-to-day basis to ensure the company’s expectations are met from a quality and delivery perspective and at director level in relation to more strategic discussions.
The Company has a culture of ensuring it pays suppliers in line with commercially agreed payment terms.
Our community and the environment
The directors recognise that the business has an important role to play in its local community. The directors regularly meet with community leaders and ensure that their views are considered.
An important focus for the business is to ensure that it functions as an environmentally friendly and resource sustaining Company. This both mitigates the environmental impact of the Company and supports the board’s strategy to enhance the reputation of the Company.
During the year, the Company has begun offering hybrid vehicles to members of the sales team to take further steps to reducing its carbon footprint.
Energy and Carbon Footprint Regulations
The annual quantity of emissions (tonnes) of carbon dioxide equivalent, resulting from activities for which the Company is responsible are as follows:
- The combustion of gas – 0.0 tCO2e/year (2021 – 0.0 tCO2e/year)
- The consumption of fuel for the purposes of transport – 189.6 tCO2e/year (2021 – 132.8 tCO2e/year)
- The purchase of electricity by the Company for its own use, including for the purposes of transport – 181.7 tCO2e/year (2021 – 246.1 tCO2e/year)
The annual quantity of energy consumed from activities for which the Company is responsible was 1,992,660 kWh/year (2021 – 1,946,743 kWh/year).
The above figures have been calculated by a third-party business of energy and environmental consulting engineers.
The Company utilises the following key ratio to express total annual emissions in relation to total occupied floorspace of the business:
Total tonnes of carbon dioxide each year/total floor area = 0.01 tCO2e/year per m2 (2021 – 0.01 tCO2e/year per m2.)
Equal Opportunities
The company gives full consideration to applications for employment from disabled persons where the requirements of the job can be adequately fulfilled by the individual.
Where existing employees become disabled, it is the Company’s policy wherever practical to provide continuing employment under normal terms and conditions, as well as provide training, career development and promotion wherever appropriate.
Regulatory Bodies
The Company aims to maintain the highest standards of conduct with each of the regulatory bodies it engages with. It does not adopt aggressive policies aimed to maximise short-term returns, instead the directors support a principled and moral approach to doing business. We have several policies in place including our zero tolerance to unethical matters such as bribery and corruption, along with maintaining transparent and fair policies with each of our stakeholders.
The company website details our compliance with the Modern Slavery legislation and provides information on our Gender Pay report.