IPM shortlisted for Pro Landscaper Sustainability & Biodiversity Award

IPM Facilities has been named a finalist in the Grounds Maintenance category at the 2026 Pro Landscaper Sustainability & Biodiversity Awards, recognising our approach to embedding sustainability across our grounds maintenance operations.

The awards celebrate the organisations, projects and people helping to advance sustainability and biodiversity across the UK landscaping industry. The Grounds Maintenance category looks beyond individual projects, recognising how businesses are driving sustainability through their operations and relationships with clients, suppliers and employees.

For IPM, this recognition comes at an important point in the development of our ESG strategy, following several years of work to strengthen our environmental commitments and increasingly embed ESG into how the business is led and operated.

Strengthening ESG leadership

A key part of that progress has been strengthening the role ESG plays within our senior leadership and wider business decision-making.

Since joining IPM as Chief Operating Officer in 2025, Dave Taylor has taken the lead on ESG across the business, helping to develop a clearer framework for our environmental and social priorities and how they translate into action across IPM.

By embedding ESG within our senior leadership team, sustainability has a stronger voice within the business and is considered alongside our wider operational and commercial priorities.

This framework gives us a clearer way to turn our ESG ambitions into action, with defined priorities and a stronger focus on measuring progress.

Dave Taylor, Chief Operating Officer and ESG Lead at IPM Facilities, said:

“Being shortlisted is fantastic recognition of the progress being made across IPM and of the people who are helping to drive it. Our focus has been on making ESG part of how we run the business, influencing the decisions we make, how we invest and how we develop our services. Reaching the final is a great reflection of that progress and gives us even more motivation to keep improving.”

Turning commitments into measurable progress

Alongside this framework, we have set clear environmental commitments and are measuring our progress against them.

IPM has been Carbon Neutral since 2021, and in 2025 our near-term Science Based Targets were validated, committing the business to a 1.5°C-aligned pathway and a 46.2% absolute reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by FY2031.

Since our 2021/22 baseline, we have reduced our carbon emissions intensity by an impressive 34.5%.

Behind those figures are practical changes to how our services are delivered. Our company car fleet is now 100% electric and hybrid, while the increased use of battery-powered grounds maintenance equipment, improved route planning, recycling, procurement and more efficient use of resources are helping reduce the environmental impact of our operations.

These decisions also have an impact beyond IPM.

As a key supplier contributing to our clients' Scope 3 emissions, improving our own environmental performance can contribute to the wider sustainability objectives of the organisations and estates we work with.

Embedding sustainability into grounds maintenance

Our wider ESG commitments are also shaping how we develop and deliver our grounds maintenance services.

Across our operations, the transition towards battery-powered equipment, more efficient route planning and greater consideration of the materials and resources we use are helping reduce the environmental impact associated with maintaining our client properties.

But sustainable grounds maintenance is about more than reducing emissions.

The way external spaces are managed can also influence biodiversity, habitat value and the wider environmental performance of a property. We are continuing to build environmental knowledge within our grounds teams and work with clients to identify where established maintenance approaches can evolve to deliver better outcomes.

This could mean reconsidering how particular areas are maintained, introducing more biodiversity-focused management practices or identifying opportunities within existing grounds that can provide greater value for wildlife while continuing to meet the operational needs of the property.

Our role as a grounds maintenance partner also gives us an opportunity to bring clients, suppliers and our own teams into that process, sharing knowledge and exploring practical changes that can be successfully maintained over the long term.

Being shortlisted by Pro Landscaper provides valuable independent recognition of the progress made so far and further encouragement to keep building on it.

The winners of the 2026 Pro Landscaper Sustainability & Biodiversity Awards will be announced at FutureScape, Farnborough International, on 13 October.