Weeks after being one of only 13 companies to secure a Queen’s Award for Enterprise for Sustainable Development, Willmott Dixon’s work to improve skills, enhance social cohesion and create new opportunities for people of all ages has seen it become one of just 44 companies to earn Business in the Community’s CommunityMark.

This is regarded as the UK’s national standard for leadership in community investment and Willmott Dixon earned the recognition for the way it involves employees and aligns its focus on key social issues that match its core business. The company’s work experience and apprenticeships are particular areas that have benefited thousands of people in the last three years alone.

Willmott Dixon was awarded the CommunityMark for its programmes in three distinct areas:

• youth employment opportunities and inspiring young people
• tackling social exclusion
• encouraging community transformation

Willmott Dixon also has a foundation with a mission to ‘improve the life chances of 3,000 young people by 2015’. Last year’s activities included mentoring 1,500 young people on career opportunities, providing work experience opportunities to 350 young people, participating in over 60 careers events attended by over 10,000 young people, arranging visits to our sites for 2,400 students and giving 50 presentations at schools to over 5,500 children of all ages. Also the 4Life Academy, created in Birmingham in 2013 to enhance life-time skills, trained over 4,000 people in its first year.

The company received strong feedback from community partners, with one remarking that the company’s ‘attitude is not lip service but a real commitment to improving people lives and leaving a positive legacy’.

Willmott Dixon Chief Executive Rick Willmott said: “As one of the UK’s biggest privately owned companies, social investment and sustainable development is an essential element of our approach. While we create, maintain and improve the buildings and homes for us to thrive in, we also want our work to enhance the very fabric of communities that benefit from our output.

“I am delighted to receive this award which recognises the time and effort that our people put into local communities and the difference they are making.”