Cressex kitchen company encouraging employees to get on their bikes

19th November 2010

A local company has accessed a grant of £1,000 to install bike racks and showers at their Cressex showroom to enable staff to cycle to work.

Imbue Kitchen Design received the grant from Sustainable Routes, which is available to businesses throughout Buckinghamshire and aims to reduce business travel and CO₂ levels.

Imbue Kitchen Design employs a team of six, many of which were keen to cycle to work. However a lack of somewhere safe to keep their bikes and no facilities to freshen up once they had arrived at work made it difficult to see their good intentions through.

Director of Finance & Administration, Elvira Strauss said: “Our team was really keen to reduce the number of cars coming in to the office each day which was very commendable and something we wanted to encourage. We decided to look into the costs of installing the most appropriate facilities for cycling and then found out about the Sustainable Routes grant which would match any investment we made, up to £1,000. It suddenly made our plans financially viable.”

A cycle rack and shower and changing facilities are now been installed at Imbue Kitchen Design and as a result five of their team are regularly cycling to work.

Sustainable Routes also provided a bespoke ‘travel plan’ containing other recommendations for reducing travel and CO₂.

“Through the plan we identified an additional opportunity to reduce the number of days one of our directors travelled to the office. A lot of their work could be done from home and so the Sustainable Routes grant also contributed to a laptop and IT equipment to facilitate remote working. The director has now cut his travel in half.”

Sustainable Routes enables businesses to reduce their business travel and operate more efficiently. It is a match funded grant of up to £1,000 that can be put towards the cost of implementing an initiative such as remote working, developing flexible working policies, video conferencing equipment and fuel conversion for company owned vehicles. It is available to businesses with less than 250 employees across Buckinghamshire.

To find out more about Sustainable Routes visit www.sustainableroutes.co.uk