Acting responsibly to make a valued contribution to the wider local community
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Our approach to CSR
At Blick Rothenberg success means more than financial performance. Success means creating a great place to work which breeds a positive, innovative culture as well as a supportive and nurturing workplace. Core to this is corporate responsibility or CSR.
Our approach to CSR supports our vision and values and we have a long and proud history of involvement with charitable and not-for-profit organisations.
Many of our partners take an active role as trustees and directors of a wide range of charities.
In December 2007, we launched a corporate and social responsibility (CSR) programme aimed at reducing the environmental harm of doing business and contributing to society through charitable activity.
We believe that we have a key responsibility in addressing pressing social and environmental concerns. This includes being consideration of all of the key stakeholders in our business including our clients, colleagues and the communities of which we form a part.
We have therefore built a balanced approach to becoming a sustainable business in the widest sense of that term. This includes our ambition to become B Corp accredited as both a demonstration of this commitment and a source of further ideas. B Corps strive to meet high standards with regard to social and environmental impact, are committed to accountability, transparency and continuous improvement and seek to engender an inclusive, equitable economic system.
We work hard to ensure that we provide an environment where all of the team feel comfortable and confident and have equal opportunity to thrive.
Our focus on being a learning organisation includes not only technical and leadership development but extends into health, mental and physical wellbeing and education around social issues.
We engage with our clients in as personalised a manner as is possible looking to build long term relationship with them and understanding how we can support them in as holistic a manner as possible.
We encourage all of our colleagues working with a client to lead on building that relationship and share what they learn internally. We review, update and apply controls and procedures to ensure that we provide the technically best advice to clients and that we respect and protect their privacy and the security of their data that we hold.
We are formally measuring the scope 1, 2 and 3 impacts of our business during 2023. Based on the findings of this we will work to set appropriate, targetable and measurable, focuses for improvement and will publish these via our website.
Within our local community we will continue to support a charity, chosen by our colleagues and work with them to raise funds and awareness. We will commit to using local businesses as suppliers and working with them to ensure that they meet the same ethical standards that we would expect. Our colleagues all have the, paid, opportunity to volunteer within the community and we will both encourage this and measure it’s take up.
Within our industry we will work to advocate for equality of opportunity with the aim that those working within our field gradually become more reflective of the wider society of which we form a part. We will measure our own diversity, whilst being considerate of the privacy concerns of our colleagues and put in place assistance to reduce any unconscious bias in our decision making.
Blick Rothenberg's partnership with The Connection
With a cost of living crisis and homelessness levels rising across London, we are incredibly proud to have chosen to support The Connection to help end rough sleeping and create a safer and fairer London for all.
The Connection has values that so seamlessly align with our own, putting people at the heart of their organisation to champion change in the local community.
It is these shared goals which make us so excited to work on this partnership together.
Lisa Gilmour talks to Olivia Wasson, Partnerships Officer at The Connection.
Access Accountancy
Access Accountancy is a profession-wide collaboration established in 2014 on the back of overwhelming evidence that people from that lower socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to be hired in the profession.
Blick Rothenberg is proud to join more than 25 professional services firms dedicated to improving the diversity within the accountancy profession in the UK and empower all to thrive in the sector.
Access Accountancy’s vision is for the accountancy profession to be more representative of the socio-economic demographic of our wider society. It’s mission is to ensure that everyone has an equal chance of accessing, and progressing within the accountancy profession based on merit, not social background.
Access Accountancy provides:
- Work placements to students from lower socio-economic backgrounds
- Collects and monitors socio-economic data of applicants and hires on an annual basis
- Generates interest in the accountancy profession in schools & colleges
Blick Rothenberg’s purpose is to improve the lives of our colleagues, clients and communities in a sustainable way.
To support this Blick Rothenberg runs its own Access Accountancy paid work experience programme twice a year aimed at Year 12 and 13 students.
Our charity partners
Each year the firm nominate and vote for a charity to support throughout the course of the year through various fundraising initiatives.
Charities we have supported
The Ben Kinsella Trust
Ben Kinsella was a 16 year old young man who grew up in Islington. He was stabbed to death on 29th June 2008.
The Ben Kinsella trust educates young people about the dangers of knife crime and help them to make positive choices to stay safe.
It’s vision: that no family or community should suffer the loss of a life to knife crime.
The trust campaigns for action and justice for those affected by knife crime and it’s campaigns have won numerous awards in recognition of their success. They consistently campaign for change; challenging government, businesses and society to ensure everyone takes responsibility for tackling knife crime.
Richard House children's hospice
Opened in 2000, Richard House was London’s first children’s hospice.
Richard House Children’s Hospice helps children and their families in East London to lead as happy a life as possible when dealing with a life-limiting health condition.
Richard House was founded by Life-President, Anthea Hare, who was inspired by both her experience as a paediatric nurse at Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel and through helping her parents to look after her severely autistic brother.
The hospice supports around 300 families each year, offering an array of much needed services. These include residential care, step-down care to help families take the step between hospital and home care enabling them to care for their child at home, music therapy to help a child with sensory needs to communicate through sound and bereavement support for all the family.
London’s Air Ambulance Charity
London’s Air Ambulance is the charity that delivers an advanced trauma team to London’s most seriously injured patients.
London Air Ambulance helicopters get them to the patient’s side in 11 minutes. By providing intervention as quickly as possible after injury, they aim to give patients the best chance of survival, and best quality of life, after trauma.
The charity serves the 10 million people that live work and travel within the M25, treating an average of five patients every day. The most common incidents attended include road traffic collisions, stabbings and shootings, falls from height and incidents on the rail network.
London’s Air Ambulance is a charity. It relies on public donations and fundraising. They work closely with the NHS and receive some funding from NHS partners, but it is not an NHS organisation.
Initiatives
Current initiatives to achieve these aims include:
- Introduction of dry recycling bins: over 50% of waste is now recycled
- Introduction of renewable forestry-sourced plain paper: Saving hundreds of trees
- Recycling of printer cartridges and batteries: reducing toxins to landfill
- Introduction of reusable mugs and glasses: reducing plastic cup consumption from 6,000 per month in 2007, to zero
- Introduction of a ‘Give As You Earn’ (GAYE) scheme to enable staff to make regular tax-free donations through payroll
- Partnering with specialist organisations to enable staff to provide pro bono advice and participate in firm sponsored community activities
- Supporting a ‘Charity of the year’ which is The Connection at St Martin-in-the-Fields
We hope that these and many other commitments will continue to ensure that we act responsibly and make a valued contribution to the wider local community in which we work.
Donations
We are committed to being transparent about the donations we make as an organisation.
On an annual basis we will provide a summary of the donations we have made and the causes we have chosen to support.
For the year ended 30 June 2024 these donations were as follows:
| Cause | Amount |
| London Air Ambulance | £15,956.97 |
| Access Accountancy | £2,481 |
| TaxAid | £10,000 |
| Ambitious Autism | £441.25 |
| Total | £28,879.22 |
The London Air Ambulance is the charity partner our people have voted for as the main charity that we support for a two-year period. A number of fund-raising activities will be undertaken during that period and at the end of it the firm will match the amount raised. This funding will primarily be in the coming financial year.
Access Accountancy is a charity that supports the encouragement of social diversity into the accounting industry. As well as supporting this charity financially we make a much wider contribution as noted below.
The most significant contribution we make is to allow our people to spend time volunteering in the local community. In the year to 30 June 2023 we would estimate this time had a value of over £80,000 in supporting causes that they choose personally. Alongside this, a number of our team spend time dealing with tax queries for TaxAid, a charity that provides fee tax advice to those on low incomes. In the year to 30 June 2023 we would estimate this time had a value of over £125,000.
As a firm we choose not to make donations to political parties and have a formal, documented policy detailing this that all of our people are required to confirm they have reviewed on an annual basis.
Corporate Social Responsibility
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