Practice Plan is part of Wesleyan Assurance Society and thanks to its overarching Sustainability Strategy, we have made considerable progress in improving our sustainability credentials throughout 2024. Wesleyan’s Group Sustainability Manager, Dan Gamson, reflects on the progress made towards achieving a more sustainable company.
Wesleyan introduced its Sustainability Strategy in 2019, meaning we’re five years along the journey. Initially, there was some ‘low hanging fruit’ which we were able to pick which made some significant impact with very little effort. However, as time goes on, it is becoming harder to continue to find big impact activities which will continue to drive progress. Despite this though, progress is still being made.
Probably one of the big turning points this year has been the move away from viewing sustainability as just environmental sustainability. Rightly so, initially there was a huge focus on waste reduction, energy consumption, and tracking the carbon footprint of our activities. Tackling the issue of our carbon footprint was the main priority and along with that, came the need for education too.
As we progress, we’ve really started to broaden our perception of sustainability, and what it means to us as an organisation. There’s so much more to sustainability than just that physical element that we tackled initially. For me, this year one of the biggest successes has come from working with Jacob Ayre, our Communities and Citizenship Manager, in the community and citizenship space. A lot of his charitable activity this year has had a huge sustainability element to it.
This has seen the second year of the climate action grant being awarded. Following the success of last year, we saw three times more charitable organisations apply for grants. That meant we were able to award £77,000-worth of donations to charities. Added to last year’s awards that means we have donated just over £150,000 to tackle climate change.
We’ve also undertaken activities for World Environment Day with the support of our colleagues using their volunteering days. Last year we had the ‘Wesleyan Big Clean’ where colleagues volunteered to litter pick, which was very successful. This year we linked up with the Lichfield and Hatherton Canal Restoration Trust who were one of the recipients of the Climate Action grant last year, to send an army of volunteers to help with their work. I see this as a double whammy because they were awarded a grant last year to support their activities, and because of that partnership and longevity, we followed up using our volunteers on their site this year for World Environment Day. This gives a great full circle picture of a relationship being built. As well as that, there’s the education of our staff and the longevity there as well, which is brilliant.
Wesleyan gives each staff member two volunteering days per year. We’re working well to increase engagements, and get our colleagues enthused about taking part in these activities. We’re also starting to see the numbers showing up and taking part in them increasing as well. At the end of the third quarter of this year, we’d seen over 650 volunteer days used. This shows that we’ve really broadened the idea of sustainability to more than just the core carbon sector. Although having said that, our carbon footprint is decreasing as well as we continue to work in that space.
Our colleagues in workplace services have also done great things this year regarding improving the infrastructure of our offices. There has been significant monetary investment in making some of these changes which explains why they have taken some time. Business cases have needed to be created to be able to justify the expenditure. Practice Plan’s head office in Oswestry is one of the places undergoing major changes to its infrastructure.
Arguably gas consumption was probably one of the largest components of our operational carbon footprint. So, in Oswestry gas is being removed entirely and electric heating installed, which should also improve thermal comfort for everybody in the offices. As all the energy comes from renewable sources, we’re heating the offices and reducing the impact on the environment at the same time. Although there’s been a significant investment needed for this, it will pay off in the long term.
I have also worked closely with Wesleyan’s Property Team. They quietly work away doing brilliant work. As part of their work this year they have purchased and procured one of the biggest EV charging ports in the UK. Whilst there is a cost to that, it shows there has been a lot of inward investment to start to diversify our property portfolio, look at new technologies, and new ways of future proofing our portfolio.
As well as this, the team, on behalf of Wesleyan, donated a sizeable plot of land to another one of our charitable partners, Free@Last , earlier this year. The team gave the 0.7-hectare disused plot in Harborne, near Birmingham, to the charity so that children and young people could have access to outdoor spaces that are difficult for them to otherwise access.
These are wonderful examples of how the work our various teams are doing all comes together under our sustainability banner. Although a lot of these types of things may have been happening over the years, they have been doing so in silos. As a company we are now in a much stronger position and able to link a lot of these activities together. Sustainability is now part of the whole company conversation, which is now a much broader, more forward-looking proposition as we’re no longer looking to just pick the low hanging fruit. We’re on the right road.
