Roythornes Solicitors’ Drive Towards Electric Vehicles
Roythornes is a national law firm with five offices across the Midlands and East Anglia, providing a range of individual and commercial services. Roythornes has achieved the Investors in the Environment (iiE) Green award for over 10 years and has made impressive environmental progress since the start of their journey. Their aim is to be a positive force for environmental change within the legal industry, advocating green values and adopting sustainable practices. Roythornes’ sustainability commitment involves working with all their staff, customers, suppliers, contractors, regulatory bodies and neighbours to achieve environmental objectives.
Key Highlights
- Introduced an Electric Vehicle (EV) Salary Sacrifice Scheme for all staff to assist with purchasing electric and hybrid vehicles
- Installed 6 electric vehicle charging points at the Spalding head office
- Published an Electric Vehicle Question & Answer article internally to engage and educate staff
- Won iiE Sustainability Influencer Award in 2023
How did they do it?
To assist staff with the cost of purchasing electric and hybrid vehicles, at a more affordable price, Roythornes implemented a salary sacrifice scheme linking with Tusker*. This scheme allows qualifying employees the benefit of a brand new vehicle, purchased in a tax efficient way. This scheme ties in with the company’s focus in reducing carbon emissions as part of a climate action plan. As well as having an environmental benefit, the scheme is also helping Roythornes in its recruitment drive for more talented individuals as part of its benefits package. In recent years, Roythornes has seen more and more recruits interested in its environmental actions and has found having the Tusker scheme certainly helps attract talent.
Furthermore, to compliment the EV Salary Sacrifice Scheme, Roythornes have also installed six electric vehicle charging points at their Spalding head office, where colleagues and visitors can charge their EVs. The infrastructure installed with the charging points allows the addition of further charging columns in future years in an easy, cost effective way. The other regional offices already have charging points on site or close by.
Both the salary sacrifice scheme and the installation of the electric vehicle charging points were Board projects, whereby suppliers were compared using the fundamentals of the company’s procurement policy and once the suppliers were chosen, the projects were overseen by the HR, Finance and Operations Teams.
What was the impact?
Since the implementation of the salary sacrifice scheme in July 2023 several employees have made use of it and found the process both straightforward and helpful. To give an insight into its benefits those individuals have also featured in internal intranet articles informing other staff how it works.
Roythornes were delighted to be recognised for their work on environmental projects by winning the iiE Sustainability Influencer Award in 2023 which focussed on their changed behaviours to inspire change beyond their direct business activities.
*Tusker have been committed to reducing emissions and moving towards sustainable transport for a long time, having been a carbon neutral organisation for over 10 years. Tusker are founding members of the EV100 (a group of organisations championing the move to zero emissions) and have multiple awards for their commitment to the environment, having offset over 200,000 tonnes of carbon through various verified carbon offsetting projects overseas and in the UK.
Find out more
To find out more about Roythornes’ sustainability commitment please visit the sustainability hub on their website Environment and Social Sustainability Hub – Roythornes Solicitors