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Our aim is to grow the company around the success of our clients and staff, prioritising inclusion, diversity, personal development, and respect. We support our staff to achieve a good balance between work and home life by offering flexible and family friendly working practices. During a recent survey 95% of staff indicated that they would recommend Lichfields as a good place to work.

 

We place great importance on the health and wellbeing of our staff. Our mental health pledge helps to build awareness and reduce stigma around mental health and create supportive working environments. We have a long-standing relationship with Empathy, our employee assistance programme, which provides our staff and their families with access to confidential counselling and other advisory services.

 

We encourage our staff to be active in their communities, utilising their skills on a voluntary basis to help local organisations, presenting at conferences and events, and raising money for charity, using the resources available to them at Lichfields. Since 2012 we have raised over £250,000 for charity, we are now targeting £500,000 by 2030.

 

  

Lichfields is an Accredited Living Wage employer. Everyone working at Lichfields, whether they are a permanent employee, intern or contracted cleaner, receives at least the real living wage. We invest heavily in the learning and development of our staff, including our graduate development programme and bespoke management training programmes.

 

We are a Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Learning Partner. We give staff the support they need to achieve their RTPI or Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Assessment of Professional Competence (APC).

 

Our MENTOR scheme is available to all staff. It benefits mentees who gain a different perspective from someone outside their team; and mentors by providing an opportunity for them to give something back, by using their experience to help others. We offer our new graduate planners APC mentors, supporting them to become chartered town planners or surveyors. We have a paid internship programme for those interested in pursuing a career in planning, and we operate a Chartered Town Planning apprenticeship scheme to attract young talent from outside the traditional “planning school” university route.

 

We work closely with government and leading business and property organisations, sharing our knowledge and insight to help shape planning policy for the future. Our award-winning blog ‘Planning matters’ gives a fresh perspective on the latest trends in planning and development. Everyone in the company is encouraged to contribute and share their knowledge. Our Insight programme attracts national media interest. In September 2021, Lichfields’ insight ‘Effective or Defective: The Housing Delivery Test’ was commended at the 2021 RTPI Awards for Research Excellence. We combine our innovative tools with a highly trained and motivated workforce capable of delivering some of the most complex and challenging projects in the UK.