Introduction
Lambert Smith Hampton (LSH) is one of the leading property consultancies with 32 offices and over 1,000 staff providing property advisory services to investors, developers, occupiers, institutions and public authorities across the UK and Ireland.
Our mission is to make our clients’ businesses thrive. We relentlessly challenge the status quo and find new ways to think and do things that shrug off convention and bureaucracy.
Some measure property by square foot, we measure it by possibility.
Values
Our values are integral to everything we do. We deliver for our clients, shareholders, and stakeholders by acting responsibly in everything we do.
Our values are:
- Innovation: we challenge the status quo
- Empowerment: we put people first
- Transparency: we are accountable and report on progress
- Collaboration: we collaborate with our people, clients, and the local communities where we operate
We seek to deliver positive impact across four pillars:
- People
- Business
- Environment
- Community
Context
We acknowledge a notable shift in the ESG agenda, understand climate-related material and physical risks to the business, and are confident in our capacity to enhance the property sector's performance positively. Mere emphasis on profitability and growth is insufficient for the corporate sector. Our stakeholders, encompassing shareholders, clients, and people, now anticipate us, as an entity, to pursue these objectives optimally: effecting positive Environmental change, generating Social Value, and upholding good Governance.
Purpose and Scope
This ESG policy sets out how we take ESG issues into account across our organisation and in all of our interactions with the world around us – the way we manage our operations, deliver client services, treat our people, engage with the communities in which we work, and the expectations we set for our suppliers.
It sets out our goals, commitments, and ambition, and recognises our desire to lead in everything we do. On ESG this means setting stretching targets for ourselves which go well beyond mere statutory compliance and developing the measurement tools, resources, and corporate culture required to achieve them.
ESG Goals
We've consistently made strides in ESG, showcasing best practices. Now, we're committed to embedding these successes across all operations, prioritizing innovation and best practices in ESG across our people, business, environment, and community systematically and measurably.
We aim for our ambitious culture, positive leadership, and strong governance structures to enable our organisation to:
- Be the best place to work, enabling ambitious people who share our values to make a difference for our clients and within the organisation.
- Deliver best in class, innovative solutions to ESG issues for our clients.
- Achieve net-zero emissions across the value chain by 2040.
- Intentionally deliver Social Value, meet our commitments, and measure our impact.
Our ESG Commitments
1. Our People:
- Deliver a best-in-class experience for our staff across pay, benefits, development opportunities, employment practices and in consideration of their health and wellbeing.
- Develop and implement a holistic framework to encourage and include diverse voices at all levels of our business, including in internal strategic decision-making bodies.
- Ensure our recruitment and performance management processes explicitly include consideration of diversity and inclusion, and alignment to our values.
- Deliver training, guidance, and adequate ESG-specialist resources to support all of our people in developing their understanding of ESG matters, building their confidence to discuss such issues with clients, and identify opportunities to integrate ESG into our service offerings.
- Deliver training and guidance to every member of staff regarding the contents of this policy, and our expectations in terms of our positive culture and respectful treatment of all people with whom we come into contact through our work.
2. Our Business:
- Review our client service offerings to identify opportunities to enhance ESG integration and create a strategy to deliver enhanced service offerings across the property lifecycle.
- Help our clients and their stakeholders anticipate and respond to evolving ESG requirements and opportunities by providing insights based on our delivery experience.
- Seek out strategic partners with whom we can deliver innovative solutions to ESG matters.
- Leverage best-in-class technology and data management systems to optimise the gathering, measurement, analysis and reporting of real world ESG outcomes delivered through our client service.
- Create cross sector working groups to innovate existing service lines with the integration of ESG.
- Ensure that contracted social value commitments are delivered to our clients and relevant to their needs.
3. Our Environment:
- Achieve net zero emissions: we have aligned our climate ambition to the SBTi's 1.5-degree warming pathway. We are committed to a 95% reduction in absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, against a 2020 baseline. Our scope 3 reduction target is 50% by 2030, against a 2021 baseline and our goal is to achieve net zero emissions by 2040 across our value chain. To ensure that we meet our targets, we are progressing our journey to net zero through third party data validation. This is to ensure a rigorous assessment of our operations and enables us to demonstrate and report annually on the improvements made to the sustainability of our business.
- Roll-out energy efficiency measures across our offices, including LED lighting, PIR sensors and smart metering systems.
- Improve our resource efficiency and develop a quantified pathway for waste reduction and water efficiency improvements across our operations.
- Foster employee sustainable living, by promoting employee benefits such as electric car scheme, cycle to work and providing rail season ticket loans.
- Encourage the prioritisation of biodiversity through education and projects for clients.
- Maintain our ISO 14001 Environmental Management System.
4. Our Community:
- Make a positive impact within the communities where we operate through active engagement with stakeholders and our dedication to delivering volunteering opportunities and pro bono work.
- Ensure our social value activity aligns to the specific needs of each local community.
- Establish long-term partnerships with charities, leveraging our in-house expertise to provide skilled support.
- Nurture talent and support skill development in our local communities, evidenced by our mentoring, apprenticeship, and work placement programmes.
- Implement comprehensive social value awareness training to ensure that every employee is equipped to contribute effectively to drive positive impact amongst community stakeholders.
- Collaborate openly with peers and industry partners to overcome barriers in key ESG challenges like reducing carbon emissions and enhancing diversity in our industry. Seek synergies with clients and stakeholders to boost positive social impact.
ESG Integration into our Operations
- Require ESG analysis to be included as a meaningful consideration for strategic decision taken at board level and through delegated authorities such as the ESG Leadership Committee.
- Apply a values-based assessment of all supplier relationships, making our values known to all suppliers, aligning our procurement and performance management processes to our ESG values, and seeking to engage with and support our supply chain to bring them up to the standards which we set for ourselves.
- Implement an enhanced framework for reporting non-financial data publicly and to the board and relevant committees for:
- our operations, relating to Our People, Our Environment and Our Community
- consideration of our performance on health & wellbeing, empowerment, inclusivity, culture, engagement, and alignment with our values.
- measuring diversity and inclusion across our workforce by seniority and in internal decision-making bodies and set specific improvement targets in this respect.
- consideration of our operational performance on energy efficiency, carbon emissions, waste generation and recycling rates, and water efficiency.
- the philanthropic activities and funds raised by our staff, training, and development opportunities (including apprenticeships) delivered to the communities in which we work, pro bono services delivered, and the outcomes driven by all of these.
- Make public commitments in relation to the above and provide independently verified public reports on our non-financial ESG performance on an annual basis.
- Review and determine to which industry bodies and standards we should align our organisation and standards we should align our organisation and become an active participant and advocate of the same. For example, we shall remain actively involved in the BBP Managing Agents Partnership, UK Green Building Council and Sustainability Supply Chain School.
A copy of our Environmental, Social and Governance Policy is available to download in full here.
