Renée Watters, Director, Rockleigh Ltd
Rockleigh Ltd is extremely proud and honoured to be a recipient of the King’s Award for Enterprise for promoting opportunity.
Having achieved the City and Guilds Princess Royal Training award, as well as being one of five to win a special commendation, we were inspired to apply for the King’s Award for Enterprise. Being a small business, we knew it was going to be a challenge, but our belief in the cause outweighed this.
Rockleigh Ltd is an Approved Contractor based in the East Midlands, specialising in remedial tree work. Due to our central location, we can cover a large area of the UK. Founded in 2016, we started from a small garage but the business has expanded over the past seven years with customers ranging from local councils through to large stately homes. We noticed a gap in the market for new arborists, and a headline in the ARB Magazine in spring 2023 – ‘Where are all the arborists?’ – confirmed the problem.
Two members of the Rockleigh Team at work.
Left to right: Niall Brooking, Ollie Dickson and Harry Connellan.
There are many barriers to entry for young people. There are issues with colleges, and paying for qualifications through other channels is expensive and unreachable for many 16–21-year-olds. Even via the college route, those who applied to us were still finishing with no real-life experience. In addition, hiring experienced people was difficult for us too as often they did not share Rockleigh’s values.
After the success of training one member of staff from start to finish, we decided this was the way to go. When we conducted interviews, we had noticed many of the candidates had difficulties such as dyslexia and ADHD, which had resulted in issues for them at school and in finding employment in other spaces. However, as soon as they picked up a chainsaw, none of that mattered.
Our new staff are given full training (which Rockleigh receives no funding for) from start to finish, as well as full-time paid work. We have ensured day-to-day tasks are dyslexia friendly by developing apps to make risk assessments and other required paperwork easier. The new starters are supported not only by established staff but by a management team who encourage them and a strong office support team who are patient and understanding of the day-to-day working of neurodivergent staff.
Winning this award is a great encouragement to staff who are currently part of the scheme, but this is also a route to entry for future arborists.
This article was taken from Issue 206 Autumn 2024 of the ARB Magazine, which is available to view free to members by simply logging in to the website and viewing your profile area.