Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Overview

At FSP, we believe that our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme should be a significant and central part of life at the firm. Consequently, staff at all levels are encouraged to participate in a variety of CSR activities, be it organising fundraising days, volunteering with local charities, or simply taking part in the numerous events which are held throughout the year. Through these activities we aim to have a positive impact on our community, offering support to local charities and initiatives, and to improve opportunities for those living in the surrounding area.

Community

We are incredibly proud to be a long-standing Reading firm and strive to place ourselves at the heart of the community. We therefore try to ensure we are doing all we can to support local charities and encourage staff to take an active role within their locality.

This can take a number of different guises and our staff are involved with a wide range of organisations. Some of the activities currently undertaken include acting as trustees of various local charities, helping with projects in local schools – including interview preparation and careers evenings, and specific working groups established to assist local charities.

We also have an extensive work experience programme and work closely with the University of Reading to support students currently studying law.

Fundraising

As well as supporting local organisations with our time and expertise, direct fundraising is also a regular feature of life at FSP.

We empower our staff to organise events in support of charities they are close to and, whatever the challenge, staff from across the firm are encouraged to get stuck in. Consequently, we are proud that these events always have a significant uptake (particularly, it seems, when fancy dress is required). Photos from our recent events can be seen here.

In addition to our CSR programme, the partners have established a separate Foundation, to which they make an annual donation, which also seeks to support local charities through grant making. More information on the FSP Foundation can be found here.

Environment

As part of our ethos, we also aim to ensure we minimize our impact on the environment and we strive therefore to ensure that the environmental consequences of our actions are factored into our decision making, at every level of the firm. We take this very seriously and over the last few years this attitude has resulted in significant changes to our suppliers and procedures. For example:

  • Every effort is made to source sustainable/ recycled products for use within the office – our paper is supplied by a PEFC certified organisation, our printed materials are supplied by a company committed to sustainability and printed on carbon neutral paper, many of our other suppliers have the FSC accreditation and the environment policies of all suppliers are reviewed and monitored on an on-going basis.
  • We have seen a significant reduction in the use of paper (via, amongst other initiatives, paper-lite policies) and single-use-plastics. We have therefore considerably cut down the amount of waste generated in the office. When waste is generated, we aim to recycle it wherever possible and any general waste that cannot be recycled is handled by a UKAS accredited organisation.
  • In addition, we have striven to reduce the carbon footprint of our office. All lighting has been replaced by low energy LED lighting, and motion sensors mean that lights are now turned off if no movement is detected. Our heating system has recently been replaced with an energy efficient heat exchange system and our water system is designed specifically to minimise heat loss and reduce water wastage.

Whilst we are proud of the changes we have made, we keep our environmental impact under constant review, and are always keen to identify areas where we can make further advances. In particular, we undertake an audit every year, where we review our current working practices and set ourselves a number of stringent targets for the following year. This ensures that we are continually seeking to identify additional changes that can be made, and new ideas/ initiates that we can adopt.