DustScan become an employee-owned business
Oxfordshire-based dust and air-quality consultancy completes transition to employee ownership
DUSTSCAN Ltd, the Charlbury-based dust and air-quality consultancy, have just completed their transition to become an employee-owned business. An Employee Ownership Trust has been registered to hold all the shares in the company and to oversee its management and profit distribution amongst the staff.
The firm was set up in 2004 by Dr Geoffrey Walton as a spin off company from Leeds University. Since 2016 it has traded under the name DustScan AQ, reflecting the growing importance of air quality in society generally. It provides planning and operational advice to a wide range of companies and organizations in the UK and overseas.
An important part of DustScan’s work is support on planning applications, with appropriate dust and air-quality monitoring and modelling for the minerals, construction and heavy industry sectors given their potential emissions and related traffic impacts.
Current work also covers research for extractive industry firms on projects as varied as predictive dust modelling at surface mines and quarries, research into the explosivity of powders and gaseous and particulate emissions from industrial operations, including asphalt plants, paving sites and steel works.
Deb Oxley, chief executive officer of the Employee Ownership Association, said: ‘We congratulate DustScan on its transition to employee ownership. By widening ownership of the business to its employees, DustScan is securing the future of the business, including its ethos, values and employees, while rooting itself locally for the longer term to the benefit of the communities which it serves.’