Best Foot Forward Welcomes Royal Award Visit

11 September 2007

2005 Queens Award winners, Best Foot Forward have met with representatives from The Queen's Awards for Enterprise as part of a promotional tour of the South East.  The tour plans to encourage more local businesses to take part in the prestigious scheme.

Stephen Brice, Secretary of The Queen's Awards Office, and Zahir Sachak, Queen's Awards Office Director, met with Nicky Chambers, Managing Director and Craig Simmons, Techinical Director to discuss how the Award had benefited the business.

In 2005, Best Foot Forward received its Queens Award for continuous achievement in sustainable development based on ecological footprint analysis.  The company has applied its innovative approach to managing the environmental impacts of business (“footprinting”) to its own operations. This highlighted several areas for improvement, such as emissions to air, water use and waste, which the company acted upon to improve performance. Innovative methods include sourcing low-impact goods, including used office furniture. The company also adopts several social initiatives including flexible working, pro-bono consulting, support for local community schemes and a commitment to monitor and report social performance going forward.

Nicky Chambers, Managing Director comments “Winning such a prestigious Award has been a catalyst for our growth, which has meant that larger premises are now required to accommodate our increased staff numbers.  We move this month but trying to minimise the environmental impact of the excercise has been a real challenge. Simple things such as using local labour and suppliers, sourcing reclaimed carpet tiles, buying refurbished desks, increasing the efficiency of heating systems and disposing of old furniture are not that simple when you are dealing with landlords and suppliers who haven’t considered these issues before and want to work in the way they always have.  We are taking the opportunity to work with Pacific Interiors, project managers of the move, and hope that this project will prompt change within their industry sector.”

For local companies who are interested to find out more about The Queen's Awards for Enterprise they can download an application form by logging on to The Queen's Awards for Enterprise website at: http://www.queensawards.org.uk.