Objective 3: Civic leaders and partners
We will positively impact the community through a sustainable supply chain, social responsibility and low transport emissions.
We will achieve this objective through four key areas of activity. Firstly, introducing new sustainable procurement principles to apply to all future contracts. Secondly by promoting active and sustainable commuting. Thirdly by developing better business travel. And fourthly by further increasing our community impact through enhanced outreach, volunteering and partnership activity. Our key commitments in this area are summarised below and explained in more detail in the remainder of this section.
Key commitments
- Launch a new Sustainable Procurement Principles Framework to help select the suppliers that more closely share our sustainability values by June 2021
- Assess the quality of our sustainable practices against the ISO 20400 Sustainable Procurement Standard by August 2022 and consider what (if any) action is required to make any desired improvements by August 2023 (subject to a feasibility review)
- Investigate the feasibility of applying for Living Wage Accreditation by August 2023
- Set annual active and sustainable commuting targets from August 2022 and implement our active and sustainable travel plans in full by August 2025
- Reduce the emissions made by car journeys by introducing: more progressive parking charges (subject to equality analysis); ride sharing; and a possible lower cost ultra-low emission vehicle leasing scheme for staff by August 2023
- Make all of the University’s vehicle fleet ultralow emissions by 2025
- Introduce a new sustainable business travel policy by December 2022
- Ensure our contracted Travel Management Company works with us in a manner that provides the optimal balance between value for money and sustainable travel, consistent with our sustainable business travel policy by December 2022
- Review our video conferencing options and work with staff and students to set annual targets for reduction in business travel emissions from August 2023
- Promote an increase in volunteering among staff and students – including introducing a new staff volunteering allowance from August 2021
- Identify opportunities to help make our employees’ homes more sustainable by August 2024
- Be active partners in various community sustainability partnerships.