News in brief

Budget 2008

Following the Chancellor’s 2008 budget statement, the weekly tax and NI exempt amount for Childcare Vouchers will remain at £55 per week (£243 per month).

However, there have been some other changes that may have an effect on the potential savings for individual parents. If you are an Accor Services client, from April your employees will be able to calculate how much they will now save by visiting our Tax Credit Estimator. Please email us if you have yet to receive or have forgotten your Scheme ID to access the Estimator.

Accor Services Cleans Up

A team of 22 volunteers from Accor Services donned their gloves and wellies to help clear up a stretch of the River Thames, in conjunction with charity Thames 21.

Patrick Langois, Managing Director at Accor Services gave his support: “Our social and environmental commitments work on more than one level.  As a business it’s clearly important to us but our employees specifically wanted to have a more immediate impact on their local environment and we wanted to give them the opportunity to make a difference.

The project was initiated by Accor Services environmental committee of employees, which meets regularly to discuss how the business can ‘go green’.  Also planned is a small tree-planting project with a local school and a more major planting exercise, involving as many as 200 trees, in the Spring.

Closer to home, the group has put a number of environmentally-friendly initiatives in place around the office.  Electronic forms of communication are used wherever possible and the business promotes on-line redemption of vouchers and electronic payment processes. Paper, plastic cups, bottles and toner cartridges are re-used or recycled. Unwanted computer or telephone equipment is disposed of responsibly; for example old telephone equipment was donated to an educational city farm and the RNIB.

Accor Services is also trying to reduce its energy consumption by encouraging staff to turn off lights and by reducing the number of fluorescent tubes in the office.  Employees are encouraged to use public transport for business trips wherever possible, and those staff who do use cars are issued with driving tips to help reduce emissions.