Company Policies

• Equal Opportunities

  We recognise that  groups and individuals within our society have been, and continue to be,  discriminated against on the basis of race, disability, sex, age, marital  status, sexuality and religious belief. Direct discrimination takes place when a  person is treated less favourably than others are (in the same circumstances) on  these grounds. Indirect discrimination takes place when a condition or  requirement, which adversely affects a particular group, is applied. We believe  that all members of society have the right to be able to enjoy day-to-day  living, free from all kinds of harassment and intolerant behaviour. 
  

  Equal  opportunities are also important in the area of consultation to ensure that  those who might be excluded because of language, religious custom, and mobility  problems or other disability can participate as fully as possible. We intend to  actively promote equality of opportunity in the provision of our services.  Living and working in Hackney, East London, we consider ourselves to be part of  a multi-ethnic community. We daily see the benefit of this diverse environment,  in the colour and variety of lifestyle traditions, textiles and cuisine. We feel  that this diversity allows us to draw upon an even wider range of references in  order to create something new. As well as being aware of this as a client issue  we are committed to being an equal opportunities employer and already have an  ethnically mixed office. We also recognise that employment practice should take  into account of the demands of childcare; we have personal experience of  balancing work and family life.
  

• Environmental

  Juliet Wood and Sian Jones have a strong personal commitment to environmental issues and we encourage our clients to consider environmental options, wherever these are appropriate. We believe that the issues of carbon dioxide emissions (through the energy used to heat and light the building, and the transport used to travel to and from it) and CFC & HCFC emissions (from building materials or refrigerants) require the most urgent consideration. The global consequences of inaction are already apparent. 
  

  We are familiar with the Building Research Establishments Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) and use the following checklist to assess environmental criteria: 

  GLOBAL ISSUES: Carbon Dioxide CFCs & HCFCs Emissions 

  LOCAL ISSUES: Natural resources water conservation, storage of recyclable materials and transport issues & facilities for cyclists 

  INDOOR ISSUES: Ventilation measures, volatile organic chemicals, timber preservatives, nongaseous indoor pollutants and daylighting. 

  We are familiar with the concept of embodied energy in building materials, and as data on this becomes more readily available we will incorporate this into our environmental checklist. The practice is committed to Repair, Re-use, Re-cycle and we support local paper, glass and aluminium recycling schemes and community computer & furniture recycling initiatives.
  

• Customer Satisfaction

  We are an efficient small practice used to designing large and complex buildings as well as the smaller more domestic scaled project. We take pride in the fact that many of our clients come back to us for further projects. We have also received a number of commissions from friends of clients or from people just seeing our built work. Most recently we were appointed to design the Racquets Centre in the Algarve, which provided the sporting centre for the entire urbanisation development on the strength of our previous successful appointment on the Spa building for the same site.