Social value is at the heart of how we do business at Willmott Dixon - from the way we procure goods and services to the impact we have on the communities we work in. Our longstanding approach to fair work, skills development and ensuring fairness and resilience in our supply chain enables us to play our part in supporting economic growth in our sector.
Skills and Opportunity for Growth
Our success depends on the skill, knowledge, integrity and commitment of our people. We enable them to give their best by supporting them to be happy at work and making sure they can achieve their full potential. You can find out more about how we attract, retain, develop and promote the people working for Willmott Dixon in the Our People section.
In 2025, 93% of our people took part in social activities, giving up over 11,000 hours of their time to interact with more than 44,000 people.
Our responsibility to develop skills that enable opportunity extends to supporting people who work for our supply chain, business partners and other organisations. In 2025, we delivered mental and physical health training sessions and allowed partners to attend management training sessions. Examples showing how we are supporting the skills gap in construction through T Level and apprentice support can be found in the “Supporting people into good careers” section of this report.
Opportunities for Small Businesses, Voluntary Organisers and Social Enterprises
Small and local businesses are the backbone of the communities where we work, so supporting them is central to how we create social value. By opening up opportunities for SMEs, social enterprises, and voluntary sector organisations, we help build stronger local economies, more resilient supply chains, and a construction industry that reflects the communities it serves.
Local Procurement
With around 83% of our turnover spent on the procurement of goods, works and services, we can support local businesses and employment by choosing to spend a project’s budget locally.
In 2025, our local spend – that is procurement and employment within 20 miles of our live projects – totalled £457.81m.
Working with Social Businesses
Social businesses include social enterprises, registered charities or not-for-profit organisations that we have a trading relationship with, Community Interest Companies, or those with a predominantly social or environmental purpose. All organisations we work with are externally verified by Social Enterprise UK, the UK’s leading body for social enterprises.
In 2025, we spent c.£5.32m with 133 social businesses. By supporting these businesses, we make sure social value is a consideration at every stage, from what we procure, through to the products and services we offer.
Since 2020, we spent £6.42 million with We Are Social Enterprise (WASE) - the UK’s first social enterprise recruitment agency - to help people furthest from the labour market build sustainable careers in construction. By supporting candidates including ex‑offenders, care leavers, ex‑military personnel and the long‑term unemployed, WASE tackles employment barriers through confidence‑building, skills workshops and hands‑on guidance. Our early backing helped WASE grow from a small start‑up into a sector‑shaping organisation that has now delivered nearly 400 placements across 88 of our sites, reinvesting every pound we spend with them into life‑changing support for individuals who need it most.
In the North of England, we also work with another social recruitment firm, We Are Footprint, which operates as a traditional employment agency with a distinct social value purpose, reinvesting over half of their net profits into community-focused initiatives, including people who are homeless, care-leavers, ex-prisoners and those not in employment, education, or training (NEETs).
We awarded We Are Footprint our Supply Chain Social Value Award in 2025 for their work with our business in the North.
Ethical Supply Chains
Our Sustainable Procurement Policy sets out our preference for supply chain partners with a like-minded approach to environmental and social responsibility. Our policy also outlines our preference to work with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and social businesses. 95% of our supply chain partners are SMEs.
In 2025, Willmott Dixon continued to demonstrate our commitment to ethical treatment, safe working conditions and good practices for our people and our supply chain partners.
Modern Slavery
As a major contractor, we take our responsibility for tackling modern slavery seriously. All our supply chain partners must comply with the requirements of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and Willmott Dixon’s Modern Slavery policy.
In 2025, we continued to deliver our own modern slavery “Learning Pathway” through the Supply Chain Sustainability School, requiring all preferred suppliers to complete it.
We continue to improve standards for our people and our supply chain. We require all new starters to complete modern slavery training as part of their onboarding and our preferred suppliers must complete our own modern slavery “Learning Pathway” through the Supply Chain Sustainability School. We are active members of the Supply Chain Sustainability School’s Built Environment Against Slavery Group. We are signatories of the Gangmaster and Labour Abuse Authority’s Construction Protocol, and the Worker Protection Commitment from the Cabinet Office and CCLA Investment Management, through which we collaborate with others to protect vulnerable workers and raise awareness of ways of managing the risk of modern slavery within the industry.
To further strengthen our approach and ensure our business and supply chain remain resilient, we are increasing our focus on ethical auditing. In 2025, we conducted audits across our project sites and higher-risk supply chain partners, completing 11 right-to-work audits and one employment audit within the higher-risk supply chain.
In our latest assessment using the Home Office’s Modern Slavery Assessment Tool (MSAT), we scored by 89%. We use the MSAT to understand where the greatest risks lie in our supply chain and make continual improvements through the development of our Modern Slavery Action Plan. In 2025, 238 supply chain partners completed the modern slavery training. In total (since 2018 & including 2026), 496 companies have completed it which equates to 90% of active Cat A works partners.
Learn more about our approach and watch the webinar here: https://www.willmottdixon.co.uk/modernslavery
Prompt payment
We know how important cash-flow is to our supply chain partners. In 2025, our average payment time was 28 days, and we paid 98.7% of our invoices within 60 days across Willmott Dixon Construction and Interiors. As well as giving our partners more confidence to work with us, this shows that our cash position does not rely on unfair supply chain payment terms or on holding back payments.
Real Living Wage
We are a Real Living Wage (RLW) Recognised Service Provider, certified by the Living Wage Foundation. We pay the RLW to all directly employed Willmott Dixon people, excluding apprentices and first- and second-year management trainees, and we promote the RLW throughout our supply chain.