Pennington Choices Blog

Wrapping up 2022

Written by Pennington Choices | Dec 21, 2022 4:18:24 PM

As another year comes to a close, we’re taking a look back at what we’ve been up to throughout 2022.

This year’s highlights

We kicked off the year with the launch of our new website, which has provided our audience with a more user-friendly experience along with a variety of free guidance and resources, such as podcasts, webinars, blogs, self-assessments, ‘how to’ guides and more.

Soon after, the first episode of our Ask the Experts by Pennington Choices podcast was released. Hosted by our in-house experts and featuring industry specialists, each episode delves deep into the issues you face around compliance and safety across the UK property landscape. Our new monthly series, ‘Ask the Experts: What’s new this month?’ provided clients with a reliable go-to source for industry updates, and a re-launch of our free, live webinars resulted in record-breaking registration numbers.

 

2022 was a great year for all things events, exhibiting at; National Housing Maintenance Forum Conference; CIH Housing 2022; Compliance AM with South East Consortium; CHIC Conference; and most recently, National Housing Federation’s Asset Management and Maintenance Conference and Exhibition.

As part of our endeavour to create a positive social impact, we took part in Tough Mudder 2022 on behalf of Merseyside Asbestos Victims Support Group and are proud to have raised over £800 for the charity to support victims of asbestos related diseases, and their family members, with information, services and emotional support.

   


Each time our food donation box in our head office became full throughout
the year, we dropped them off at our local food bank, Care UK. To end the
year on a high note, over the Christmas period our staff members came together to raise money with Pennington Choices matching all donations on behalf of our client, Torus Housing Association, to support our local communities. We sponsored a snowflake for Sheffield Children’s Hospital,
and donated 240 selection boxes to Manchester City’s Christmas initiative, with each box going to a young person either in care or a young carer.
 
 

Alongside giving back to the community, having fun is one of our core values. Our social committee organised a range of events from BBQs and wellbeing days to celebrating World Food Day and Christmas activities. We are also committed to improving the mental health of our employees, with our ‘You Matter’ programme being a great success over the past year.

Placing #41 on the Best Companies survey for the Best Medium Sized Company to work for, we were delighted to also win Employer of the Year at the Warrington Business Awards, and a Gold Award from The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA).

Our Bromley office provided work experience for a local student, where they achieved accredited certificates in a variety of modules and got to experience what it is like to work in the asbestos industry from all areas of the business. We plan to continue the work experience programme throughout 2023, providing more students with opportunities for learning.

Through our great work with the bid team, we are delighted to be working with many new clients, as well as continuing to work with existing clients through contract renewals. Examples included working with Blackpool council on the provision of Fire Risk Assessments and fire strategies, providing project management and cost consultancy to Barnsley Metropolitan Council as part of £23m of regenerative funding from central government, and delivering 49,000 stock condition surveys worth £2.2m across North London for Clarion Housing Group. We placed on several great frameworks too, placing first on both Procurement Assist’s gas auditing framework and NHMF’s compliance auditing framework for gas and electric.

We became members of the Association for Specialist Fire Protection (ASFP) and Legionella Control Association (LCA), whilst maintaining and renewing CHAS, Constructionline Gold, IFE, FPA, Safecontractor, ATaC, UKATA and ISO9001.

Last but certainly not least, eight of our asbestos and lab employees successfully completed new qualifications including the P401, P402, P403 and P405.

And that’s a wrap!

We are looking forward to seeing what 2023 brings, and would like to wish you a wonderful festive season.

In the meantime,  for the deadlines you need to have on your building safety radar for 2023, along with a handful of useful guidance and resources, take a look at our '2023: What's Coming Up?' blog.