Policies

Stakeholder grievance procedure

Approved by Perigon's Directors, 8 July 2026. Process steps, timescales and confidentiality safeguards added October 2026.

Who this is for

This procedure is for anyone outside Perigon who wants to raise a concern about how we conduct our business, including clients, suppliers and subcontractors, research or bulletin readers, members of the wider community, or anyone else affected by our work.

If you are a current Perigon colleague raising a concern about your own employment, please use our internal Grievance Procedure instead, which is available to you via our people policies.

What counts as a grievance

We want to hear about any genuine concern relating to Perigon's conduct, including (but not limited to):

• ethical concerns about how we have carried out our work
• concerns about our social, environmental or governance impact
• a concern that we have not lived up to a public commitment we have made (for example, our JEDI Commitment Statement)
• concerns about how a member of our team has treated you or someone else
• any other concern about our behaviour as a business.

If you have a straightforward service question or feedback on a piece of work, it's often quickest to raise this with your usual Perigon contact first. This procedure is here for anything you feel hasn't been, or can't be, resolved that way, or that you'd simply rather raise through a formal channel.

How to raise a grievance

You can raise a grievance in whichever way feels easiest:

• email us at hello@perigonpartners.co.uk, with "Grievance" in the subject line
• write to us at Perigon Partners Ltd, c/o Melbarry Accountants, 30/5 Hardengreen Industrial Estate, Eskbank, EH22 3NX.

It helps us respond quickly if you include your name and how to contact you (both optional), your relationship to Perigon (for example client, supplier or community member), the details of your grievance, and whether you are happy for us to contact you about it.

You do not have to give your name if you would rather remain anonymous, although this may limit our ability to investigate fully or keep you updated on the outcome.

What happens next

1. We acknowledge your grievance within 5 working days of receiving it. We tell you who is handling it and when you can expect to hear from us. If you have raised it anonymously and left no contact details, we cannot acknowledge it, but we will still look into it.
2. Within 10 working days of receiving it, we decide whether the concern falls within this procedure. If it does not, we tell you why and, where we can, point you to a more suitable route.
3. A Founding Partner who is not involved in the matter looks into it. If the grievance concerns one Founding Partner, the other handles it. If it concerns both, we offer to appoint an independent third party agreed with you. Looking into it may include speaking to you, speaking to the people involved and reviewing relevant records.
4. We aim to send you our response within 20 working days of acknowledging your grievance. The response sets out what we found, what we will do about it and how that resolves your grievance. Depending on the case, a resolution may include an apology, correcting a piece of work, changing how we do something, or another remedy we agree with you.
5. If we need longer, we tell you why and give you a new date. While a grievance is open, we update you at least every 10 working days.
6. When the matter is resolved, we confirm in writing that the grievance is closed.

Recording grievances

We record every grievance we receive in a grievance log, including the date received, the subject, whether we accepted it, the outcome and how long it took. The Founding Partners review the log each year when they review this procedure, and we use it to check whether the procedure is working and whether the same issues keep coming up.

Confidentiality

We will handle your grievance in confidence, sharing details only with those who need to know in order to look into and resolve it, unless we are required by law to share information more widely, or you ask us to.

When we acknowledge your grievance, we tell you who will handle it and who else will need to be involved or informed. We ask for your consent before sharing your identity or the details of your grievance with anyone else, unless the law requires us to. If you ask us to keep your identity from the people your grievance concerns, we will do so wherever we can, and we will tell you if a fair investigation is not possible without it. We keep the outcome confidential between you and those involved in resolving it.

No retaliation

We are committed to a strict no-retaliation approach. Nobody who raises a grievance in good faith, or who assists someone in doing so, will experience any adverse treatment from Perigon as a result. This applies whether or not your grievance is ultimately upheld.

If a member of our team retaliates against someone who has raised a grievance, or breaches the confidentiality of a grievance, we treat it as a disciplinary matter under our disciplinary procedure, which can treat a breach of confidentiality as gross misconduct. If you are worried about retaliation, please tell us when you raise your grievance. The person handling it will consider the risk to you and agree with you how to manage it, which may include involving an independent third party.

If you remain unhappy

If your grievance was handled by one Founding Partner and you remain unhappy with the outcome, you can ask for it to be reviewed by the other Founding Partner. Where both Founding Partners have been involved, or a conflict of interest exists, we will offer to appoint a mutually agreed, independent third party to review the matter.

Accountability

Perigon's Founding Partners, Emma Walford and Nick Walford, are Perigon's Directors and highest governing body. They are jointly accountable for this procedure, for ensuring grievances are handled fairly and within the timescales above, and for reviewing this procedure at least annually.

Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (JEDI) commitment statement

Approved by Perigon's Directors, 8 July 2026

Our commitment

Perigon's purpose is to unlock the power of business to enrich people, planet and prosperity. We cannot deliver on that purpose in a business, or a society, that is unjust, unequal, or exclusionary.

We commit publicly to embedding Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) principles across everything we do. This goes beyond treating people fairly in the moment: it means actively identifying and removing the barriers, historic and ongoing, that hold some people back more than others, and building a business where power and opportunity are shared more evenly.

For Perigon, that means:

• Justice: acknowledging that systemic and historic inequities exist, and taking deliberate action to address them rather than assuming neutrality is enough.
• Equity: recognising that people start from different places, and providing the support, access and opportunity needed for fair outcomes, not just equal treatment.
• Diversity: building a business, client base and network that reflects a genuinely wide range of backgrounds, identities and perspectives.
• Inclusion: making sure everyone who works with us feels able to contribute, be heard, and thrive as themselves.

Where this commitment applies

This commitment applies across the full scope of Perigon's business:

• Our operations: how we hire, develop, pay, manage and support our people, and how decisions are made inside the business. Our Diversity Statement and related people policies set out how we put this into practice day to day.
• Our customers: how we engage with clients and partners, the fairness and transparency of how we work with them, and our commitment to serving a diverse range of clients well.
• Our community: our wider contribution beyond our own walls, including the suppliers and partners we choose to work with and the way we use our position as a business to support a fairer economy.

We recognise that some of the people affected by our decisions, including candidates, junior team members, smaller suppliers, and clients with less negotiating power, have less ability to influence us or to walk away. We take that imbalance seriously and factor it into how we listen and act.

Accountability

Perigon does not currently have a separate Executive Team; our Founding Partners, Emma Walford and Nick Walford, are Perigon's Directors and highest governing body. As such, they are personally and jointly accountable for this JEDI commitment. This means they are responsible for:

• approving this statement and any material changes to it
• ensuring it is reflected in Perigon's policies and everyday decision-making
• reviewing progress against it at least annually, and updating it as the business grows
• being the point of accountability if stakeholders wish to raise how well Perigon is living up to this commitment.

As Perigon grows and an Executive Team or Advisory Board is established, this accountability will extend to that wider leadership group.