Burges Salmon’s Pensions team has won the Impact on Climate award at the Pensions Management Institute Pinnacle Awards 2022. This award also reflects the extensive and market leading advice the Pensions team provides to pensions schemes and employers, including the recent launch of our ESG Pensions Tool.
The Awards recognise the best of the pensions profession and celebrate people and new ideas that contribute in making a real impact in the pensions world. The Pensions Management Institute (PMI) is committed to moving pensions forward through supporting innovation and inspiring change.
The ‘Impact on Climate - Firmwide Environmental Initiative’ category looks at corporate behaviour in and around operations, from energy efficiency and waste management, to recycling and reduction in the use of non-sustainable plastics. This award showcases the positive action taking place in the industry. This Impact on Climate category is of particular importance in the context of Burges Salmon’s Pensions team’s advice to pensions schemes and employers in relation to ESG requirements and best practice.
Burges Salmon Pensions team’s win is in respect of its ongoing commitment to the environment and to taking positive action on climate change. The firm’s respect for the climate is long-standing, using robust, science-based targets in order to understand how to reduce our current emissions to achieve the firm’s aims. Burges Salmon’s targets are to reduce 50% of the firm’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 against a 2019 baseline.
The firm’s Environment Committee, led by Pensions partner Suzanne Padmore, brings together stakeholders from across the business who are working together to have a positive impact on climate. The committee oversees our continual improvement through the ISO 14001 accredited environmental management system. The firm also has an internal network of environmental champions driving initiatives that help Burges Salmon to achieve its environmental objectives, including raising awareness among the firm’s people and fostering positive behaviours.
Burges Salmon is also a founding member of the Legal Sustainability Alliance and the Net Zero Lawyers Alliance, providing leadership within the legal sector. The firm is a signatory to the One Planet Pledge, a member of the Bristol Green Capital Partnership Climate Leaders Group and participates in the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project). Burges Salmon also invests with ‘Trees for Life’ supporting a reforesting, conservation and rewilding project, with offsets accredited to the UK woodland carbon code, and continues to report on its environmental performance in the annual Responsible Business Report, which details environmental objectives, progress, case-studies and a suite of environmental performance measures.
Burges Salmon partner Richard Knight, who heads up the firm’s Pensions practice, comments: “Winning in this category at the inaugural PMI Pinnacle Awards cements our efforts for championing environmental sustainability even further both as a firm and for our pensions scheme and employer clients. It is fantastic to receive our award for Impact on Climate and it’s great to see that these efforts and the combined success of the team in the past year has been recognised.”
The PMI Pinnacle Awards took place at The Londoner hotel on 25 October 2022.