RLSS UK UKAS accredited ISO 14001

CASE STUDY: Royal Life Saving Society UK (RLSS UK)

RLSS UK UKAS accredited ISO 14001 with Compliant.

Why Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS UK) decided to invest in ISO 14001

The Royal Life Saving Society UK’s (RLSS UK) purpose is to enhance communities, so everyone can enjoy being in, on and around water, safely. Their work is vital in every city, town, community and home. We are delighted the charity chose to work with ourselves and gain ISO 14001 (environmental standard).

We interviewed RLSS UK Chief Executive, Robert Gofton to discover why the charity decided to invest in ISO 14001.

He said: “In 2020, we launched a new strategy with a key goal of becoming more environmentally responsible. This led us to consider implementing an environmental management system to help us achieve our aim. In addition, many of our stakeholders were eager to see us take action to protect the environment and suggested that we pursue a standard like ISO 14001. As a charity, we’re committed to becoming carbon neutral, and we’re particularly concerned about the issue of microplastics in water. To address this, we’re taking steps to minimise and eventually eliminate single-use plastics throughout our organisation.”

The Process

Robert added: “Looking at ISO 14001 enabled us to explore what we already had in place and where we could improve.

“We knew from the beginning that we wanted support as we have never implemented an ISO certification before. We approached national certification body, BAB, for their advice on a certification consultant and they recommended several companies. We reached out to several consultants, and after a successful initial meeting with Mark, we decided to proceed with Compliant.

“Initial meetings with Mark showed that we had a lot of the processes already in place. Compliant’s GAP analysis enabled us to fine tune the management pack and identify anything that was missing.”

Compliant prides itself on its unique process of taking what documents a client already has in place and embedding those documents, processes and procedures into a completely unique framework ready for audit.

The Outcome

Robert continued: “We now have an environmental and sustainability team with seven members. We are exploring a range of initiatives that we can implement to operate more energy efficiently across our organisation.

“Mark was very reassuring throughout the process and his expertise and support on the run up to and during our audits was invaluable.”

Compliant Director Mark Henderson commented: “We are also keen to support charities in their ISO journeys and helping RLSS UK to become ISO 14001 certified has been a great privilege for us. Robert and the team have been fantastic and knowing that such an important business is taking their environmental impact so seriously is great. We are looking forward to seeing how their business changes and having ISO 14001 in place will make a positive impact to the environment. Well done everyone.”