Our Commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility

Our CSR policy covers community involvement, charity work, diversity, firm values and environmental initiatives.

All partners and employees throughout the firm are responsible for our CSR performance. This policy is reviewed on an annual basis by the Senior Partner to ensure the policy is effective across the practice and updated as necessary.

Staff awareness of CSR is maintained through internal communication which details how to get involved with initiatives and encourages staff to discuss suggested improvements to the policy.

Please read our CSR Policy 2022-2023.

We are committed to eliminating discrimination and encouraging equality and diversity amongst our workforce. Our aim is to ensure that our workforce is truly representative of all sections of society and that each employee feels respected and able to contribute fully.

Our aim is to provide equality and fairness for all in our employment and not to discriminate on grounds of sex, sexual orientation, marital status, race, ethnic origin, colour, nationality, national origin, disability, religion, belief or age.

All employees are helped and encouraged to develop their full potential. We are committed to delivering a fair employment environment and the opportunity to advance and strive to ensure that everyone in the firm has ready access to development opportunities at all times.

To find out more, please click here to view our Equality and Diversity Policy or see our report on Diversity in the Legal Sector – 2021.

Our Modern Slavery Statement outlines the steps taken by our firm to ensure that slavery and human trafficking are not present in our business or direct supply chain. This is inline to section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (the “Act”) for the financial year ending on 31st March 2024.

Please read our modern slavery statement.

We are dedicated to being a responsible contributing member of society, seeking to build strong relationships with the local community, and supporting local and national charities.

We endeavour to share successes with the local community and seek to work in co-operation with the voluntary sector and other bodies in the local area to see where investment (in financial or other terms) can best be made across all offices.

• Supporting initiatives aimed at assisting businesses in the Yorkshire region.
• Volunteering in community projects.
• Supporting and sponsoring community work by employees.
• Supporting initiatives aimed at assisting vulnerable individuals in the community, such as Will Aid.
• Supporting community events by working closely with community ambassadors and offering donations towards the running of these events such as the Yeadon Gala and Christmas Fayre.
• Our Wills and Estates team includes solicitors that are members of Solicitors for the Elderly which helps potentially vulnerable people with help and advice should they need it.
• Our Employment team assists individuals who have suffered discrimination, including those with disability, physical and mental.
• Our personal injury and clinical negligence teams assist individuals with significant, severe injuries including those with disabilities.
• Our staff are politically engaged and support the work of local parties and councils, and severe as Board members for charitable trusts, arts and cultural organisations.
• Providing advice and support to national charities such as Headway (the organisation representing victims with all aspects of head injury) and Age UK.
• Our non-legal staff members use their professional skills to support local social enterprises on a voluntary basis.
• Our team members regularly support various local and national charities throughout the year, undertaking various fundraising projects. More information about our charitable partners can be found on our website. Our nominated charities for 2022-23 are Zarach, Simon on the Streets, PhysCap, and Maggie’s Yorkshire.

It is an aim to make all communities more dementia friendly to improve the quality of life for those diagnosed with a form of dementia.

As a firm, we are members of the Bradford Dementia Action Alliance and Leeds Dementia Action Alliance. Our action plan can be seen on the Dementia Action Alliance website.

We have made three commitments to improve our working environment to become more dementia friendly. These are as follows:

1.       Dementia Awareness Training for staff

2.       Adaptations to office environment

We have already improved signage in our Bradford office. For Pudsey, we will shortly be modernising the seating area and improving signage, where necessary. Yeadon and Leeds will also be adapted where necessary to make the office environment dementia friendly (For example – improved signage for toilets, the reception area, entrance and exit points, neutral colours etc)

3.       Establish closer links with community organisations

(i)       Through our previous ‘Charity of the Year’ work with the Alzheimer’s Society at Armley and our links with Alzheimer’s Society at Shipley, we hope to encourage people and other businesses to get involved in this initiative. If we can do our bit to make the places in which we work and visit more dementia friendly, it can only help to improve the quality of life for those with dementia.

(ii)       It is important that we explain to people the importance of making a power of attorney.

We have received certificates from the Bradford DAA (January 2014) and Leeds DAA (May 2014) recognising our commitment to this initiative. Let’s hope we can help to make a difference.

We take our responsibilities towards the environment very seriously and encourage all staff members to adopt ethical principles. We are taking continuous steps to minimise our impact on the environment through reduction of waste and energy consumption.

We have introduced a number of environmental practices and will continue to do so. These practices include:

• Recycling all shredded paper.
• Low energy lighting.
• Carbon offset printers/copiers.
• Purchase of recycled products via our stationary suppliers.
• PC’s are turned off at night when staff leave the building, not left on standby, unless required for software upgrades.
• Office waste i.e. leaflets, magazines, cans are recycled.
• Our used toner cartridges and firm mobile phones that have reached the end of their life are sent for recycling.