ISO standards

ISO 9001

Porchlight was certified for ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management in January 2016. This was upgraded to ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management in January 2017.

ISO 27001

Porchlight was certified for ISO 27001:2013 Information Security in May 2017.

ISO 14001

Porchlight was certified for ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management in May 2017.

ISO 9001 Quality Policy Statement

Porchlight strives for a fairer society where vulnerable people find stability, the most excluded are included, and where homelessness and poverty are things of the past.

Our aim is to change lives for the better, by:

• preventing people from becoming homeless through the provision of timely and personalised support services;
• providing housing, education, employability and personal development support to the most vulnerable and isolated people in our communities; and
• challenging negative attitudes towards homeless people and those living in poverty.

We will ensure that our current services continue to remain high quality and where appropriate we will develop new services to meet our clients’ needs and continually work to improve all the services we deliver by ensuring that our organisational shared values, strategy, structures, systems, staff, skills and style are as effective and efficient as possible.

In doing this we will comply with all legal and other requirements and set clear objectives for each part of our organisation which will be communicated to all staff.

ISO 27001 Information Security Policy Statement

The competent and safe management of information within our organisation is a core competence and the failure to manage it effectively can both put our Service Users at risk as well as compromise the organisation.

As we grow and develop we are working in a less forgiving environment and whilst there will always be a risk of information being compromised it is essential that we have effective processes and procedures to reduce this risk to an acceptable level.

Our overall information security aim is to have reliable information that is available to support our service users in a confidential and safe manner without compromising the safety of the public, our staff or any other agencies with which we are working or might reasonably expect to have access to the information that we hold.

We will comply with all applicable legal requirements relating to information security. We will identify relevant and measurable objectives in line with our significant risks and contextual issues, and will measure progress towards these. Objectives will be included in the strategic plan and reviewed by senior management on an annual basis to ensure we are continually improving our information security systems.

ISO 14001 Environmental Management Policy Statement

As part of being a socially responsible organisation in a world of finite natural resources it is important that we display high standards of Environmental Citizenship and this is even more important as we grow and develop where our actions will be both more visible and have greater impact. We are committed to the protection of the environment and the prevention of pollution.

We will ensure that all staff are familiar with and use the waste hierarchy principles in our work as well as encourage our service users to follow the same principles of using our limited resources wisely and minimising the volumes of waste that we create.

We will annually carry out a review of all aspects of our charity that have an environmental impact and set environmental objectives to manage those that we believe are significant. Objectives will be included in the strategic plan and these will be reviewed by senior management on an annual basis to ensure we are continually improving our environmental management system (EMS) and are monitoring these impacts to help minimise them in the long term. The EMS will be reported on to the Board as part of the regular ISO management report and will be subject to annual external audit as part of the ISO process.

It is essential that we can proactively demonstrate that to the best of our knowledge we are aware of all the environmental legislation and any other relevant statutory or regulatory codes with which we need to comply and will ensure that this register is both kept up to date and carry out an annual evaluation of compliance.

We will consider the environmental impact of all organisational decisions which will be balanced alongside other considerations. Where appropriate we will develop specific programmes or procedures to limit the environmental impact of any decision.

ACM (certification body)

ACM is an internationally focused certification business with a global presence, servicing thousands of clients in more than 20 countries around the world; ACM provide certification to a wide range of internationally recognised standards