Corporate and Social Responsibility

Although Tallents Solicitors is one of the larger firms of solicitors in North Nottinghamshire we still offer a personal service to our clients. Our size and structure always ensure that the seven Partners (making up the firm’s partnership/ABS) and approximately sixty staff are never remote from our clients.

Introducing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – what is it?

• As a business, our operations and services have a major impact on our local community and environment. Via our interaction with employees, clients, suppliers and others we can make a real difference.
• CSR means managing this impact to add value to the Partnership and to increase wider economic and social well being, now and in the future. CSR not only offers us the chance to make a difference, but we can also create local goodwill.
• We at Tallents Solicitors recognise that responsible business practice helps develop our personal and professional skills, helps broaden the perspectives of our employees and helps to reinforce a sense of local community.
• For Tallents Solicitors this means that we are conscious of our impact on our local communities and seek to enhance the economic and social environment on our doorsteps.
• The Partners have agreed to formalise CSR and Vili Chung will be responsible for managing its development.

Benefits to our staff

• Generating staff commitment and goodwill.
• Developing stronger team working skills.
• Providing opportunities for staff to develop their other skills, by working with different communities and cultures, sometimes in unfamiliar situations.
• Support from the Practice for the causes they want to support.

Benefits to the community

• Sums raised for local charities are boosted by “matched” funds from the firm.
• Organisations can quantify the time given to them in kind, in monetary sums and use this to lever more money from their funding bodies.

Benefits to the Practice

• Demonstrating and communicating a commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility both to staff and the general public.
• Generating goodwill with our business partners.
• Generating staff commitment and goodwill.
• Providing networking opportunities.
• Generating public goodwill.
• Enabling Tallents Solicitors to target its investment to the most deserving causes.
• Providing opportunities for staff to develop their skills, which they will transfer to the Practice.

Activity at Tallents Solicitors

• Tallents Solicitors considers the impact of the organisation’s activities on customers, employees, shareholders, communities and the environment in all aspects of its operations. We recognise that responsible business practice helps develop our personal and professional skills, helps broaden the perspectives of our employees and helps to reinforce a sense of local community.
• This means that we are aware of our impact on our local communities and seek to enhance the economic and social environment on our doorsteps through responsible business management. This obligation is seen to extend beyond the statutory obligation to comply with legislation and sees our company voluntarily taking further steps to improve the quality of life for employees and their families as well as for the local community and society at large.
• Tallents Solicitors is keen to embrace CSR and make it part of our everyday life at work. Any staff interested in being a CSR representative should contact the Practice Manager or Vili Chung. Our CSR activity will be promoted on our website, be featured as part of our general marketing and in our communications with clients and work referrers. If you have any ideas on how we could help our local community then please do let us know and get involved. The policy will be discussed and reviewed at the firm’s annual Strategy Meeting.

In the Community

• Tallents Solicitors’ commitment to the local communities it serves goes beyond just fund raising and making charitable donations. Our roots have been in Nottinghamshire for over 250 years, and we believe that as a company we can create opportunities to help build vibrant and thriving communities as well as providing an excellent service to our clients.

Working in Partnership

• Working in partnership with local community organisations and charities to invest via employee support, expertise, skills, cash donations, gifts in kind and linking brands to causes.
• Tallents has supplied the Steward to the Laxton Court Leet for over 150 years. The Laxton Court Leet is the last medieval baronial court in Europe, which hands out fines for farming beyond set boundaries, and is the only one still in existence that retains jurisdiction.
• Agricultural links – Partners are members of several local agricultural committees, the CLA and Nottinghamshire Agricultural Society. These links have recently been strengthened.
• The Tallents Godfrey and Company Trophy is presented annually at the Southwell Agricultural Show. We also have one member of staff on the committee.
• The company annually supports local ploughing matches: Collingham and District Agricultural Show, the Flintham Agricultural Show and the Southwell Ploughing Match.
• The company supports the South Notts Point to Point.
• The company supports the Southwell City Football Club, Farndon Colts FC and Southwell Rugby Club U13.
• Tallents Solicitors undertake a certain amount of pro bono work for local community groups and charities.
• Support for youth sporting endeavours across the district.

Building Educational Links

• Tallents Solicitors build local education links in the community via youth involvement.
• The Southwell Office has leased part of its land for free to the Prebend Pre-school in Southwell for them to create an outdoor play area and sensory garden for the children, which they were lacking before. This meant the pre-school could offer outdoor and community activities to the children and improve its Ofsted rating. In their 2011 Ofsted report, it was noted that there was: ‘positive change for (the) children. An example of this is the setting’s progress in developing a sensory garden and creation of a secure outdoor play area, increasing opportunities for physical play, fresh air, exercise and recognising that some children learn better outdoors.’ The report also stated: ‘Children’s health is well-promoted in the pre-school. Frequent opportunities are now provided for children to play outdoors and gain fresh air. The sensory garden offers increasing opportunities for children to explore the natural world. A group gather to plant and care for seeds ready for their garden centre project in the summer.’ We have now expanded the area of land available to the Prebend Pre-School at no cost to them.
• Since 2009 Tallents Solicitors has been sponsoring and supporting the then newly set up Newark & District Chess League, an ongoing sponsorship which still continues today. Aimed at boys and girls aged from 5 to 10 from primary schools across Newark and the surrounding area, the sponsorship allows the league to hold chess training lessons throughout the year and provide prizes for the children. The league is growing year on year with Tallents Solicitors’ help. We approached the Newark Chess League in 2009 and offered sponsorship because we knew it was a new initiative within the area and needed support from a local business to help raise its profile. For Tallents Solicitors, it was an opportunity to encourage local children, both boys and girls from a range of age groups and a diversity of local schools, to take part in a game that is inexpensive, portable, and easy to learn. Tallents Solicitors recognises that chess knows no bounds of age, gender, class, nationality or even ability. Novices can play experts. Children can play siblings, parents, grandparents or each other. Chess also improves children’s developmental and academic performance, by enhancing learning strategies and literacy, comprehension and arithmetic skills, social behaviour, personal growth, decoding, thinking, comprehension, analysis and problem-solving skills. Sponsoring the Newark Chess League and helping it to grow across the locality fits perfectly with Tallents’ wider commitment to the community and its desire to help improve local educational standards.

Protecting the Vulnerable

• MENCAP – one solicitor regularly speaks at local meetings on legal issues that impact on families affected by disability.
• Free half hour legal consultations – our Family Law department offers a free half hour consultation for new clients providing support and advice.
• Sherwood and Mansfield NHS Trust – Tallents Solicitors has provided legal advice for the new NHS patient handouts on elderly-related issues such as preparation of wills, preparation of Lasting Powers of Attorney, nursing care concerns, Court of Protection applications and Inheritance Tax concerns.
• Later Life Care – members of our Private Client team are also affiliated with Solicitors for the Elderly, the Society of Trusts and Estate Practitioners, and are also Dementia Friends. We offer appointments for elderly and vulnerable clients in the comfort and convenience of their own homes.
• We offer a free, after-hours phone-in legal clinic once a week, which is run by members of our Family Law department.
• Tallents Solicitors has participated in Will Aid from 2016-2021, 2023-2025.
• Our staff conduct regular visits to local hospices to offer legal advice to patients and family members.

Listening to Local Concerns

• We listen and engage with the local community, public and voluntary sectors on matters of mutual concern. Several Partners have additional external directorships in key local businesses.

Community Support

We actively engage our employees in fundraising and charitable activities and support their efforts with matched funding. Over the years, we have been involved in many activities and here are just a few examples:

• Charitable Support has always been an aim of Tallents Solicitors and many local charities benefit from this. Charity fund raising involves all the staff. Over the last year we have supported: the local Food Bank, Beaumond House Hospice, Children’s Bereavement Centre, Cancer Research Campaign and Macmillan Nurses. In addition, several Partners provide pro bono advice by serving on several committees of local charities.
• National Charity Support – over the years our staff have also raised funds for: ‘Wear it Pink’ – Breast Cancer Research, Macmillan’s Largest Coffee Morning – Macmillan Nurses, Red Nose Day, Comic Relief, the Red Cross, CLIC Sargent, Marie Curie Cancer Care and Save the Children.
• Local Charity Support – Tallents Solicitors also supports several local charities, including Beaumond House Community Hospice and the Southwell Care Project.
• In 2011, Tallents became the first ever Principal Sponsor of Palace Theatre Newark, forging ever-closer links between two historic businesses in the town. The sponsorship monies go towards a range of projects, including exciting plans to engage children more closely with performing arts.
• Sponsorship of the Balderton Cricket Club, Newark Book Festival and Newark and Sherwood Concert Band.
• In addition, for our 250 anniversary, Tallents Solicitors donated funds and staff time to charities local to the three offices including Reach, Emmaus Trust, Beaumond House and SHE. Due to the success of the volunteering, the Partners have decided to make this an annual opportunity to all staff.

Conclusion

Tallents Solicitors is keen to embrace CSR and make it part of our everyday life at work. Any staff member interested in being a CSR representative should contact the Practice Manager or Vili Chung. Our CSR activity will be promoted on our website, be featured as part of our general marketing and in our communications with clients and work referrers. If you have any ideas on how we could help our local community then please do let us know and get involved. The policy will be discussed and reviewed at the firm’s annual Strategy Meeting.