Equality, diversity and inclusion

By truly embracing our colleagues’ diverse perspectives we can deepen our understanding of our customers and stakeholders, enhance innovation and creative thinking and continue to drive the business forward and achieve success.

Historically, the housebuilding sector has attracted fewer women and people from ethnic minorities. This is changing but more work is needed before our business and sector is fully reflective of the UK’s diversity. 

Equality, diversity and inclusion performance is reviewed twice yearly by the Nomination and Governance Committee of the Board of Directors and by our GMT.

Our ED&I Committee oversees implementation of our strategy and is chaired by our Divisional Chair for the North, Lee Bishop, who is a member of our GMT. Each regional business has an ED&I Champion and an ED&I Action Plan, created and owned by the regional management teams. We have set quantitative aspirational targets to help drive progress and accountability and each regional business has its own set of diversity targets with performance reviewed regularly by our Divisional Chairs, Group HR Director (members of our GMT) and Regional HR partners.

Our ED&I Committee oversees implementation of our strategy and is chaired by our Divisional Chair for the North, Lee Bishop, who is a member of our GMT. Each regional business has an ED&I Champion and an ED&I Action Plan, created and owned by the regional management teams. We have set quantitative aspirational targets to help drive progress and accountability and each regional business has its own set of diversity targets with performance reviewed regularly by our Divisional Chairs, Group HR Director (members of our GMT) and Regional HR partners.

We are fully committed to equality of opportunity in all our employment practices and have a zero-tolerance approach to discrimination or harassment of any kind including on the grounds of age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. We publish our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy online. This is supported by more detailed policies in areas such as Maternity and Adoption Leave, and Menopause.

We published our third Diversity and Inclusion Report in early 2025.

Embedding our diversity commitments

E-learning: Our Diversity and Inclusion e-learning is integrated into onboarding training for all employees. This builds awareness of our ED&I strategy, policies and expected standards of behaviour. By the end of 2024, the module had been completed over 1,100 times.  We launched additional e-learning for line managers in 2024, covering topics such as embracing and respecting differences, bias, stereotypes, microaggressions and prejudice in actions, psychological safety and belonging, privilege and allyship.

Respectful workplace: This culture change programme supports our leaders to ensure that all sites are inclusive and welcoming places with zero-tolerance for bullying, harassment, inappropriate comments and behaviours. All regional businesses have participated in the first phase, which included management training, visual signage for use around sites, respectful workplace training for all employees, an updated site induction and enhanced site facilities. Phase 2 training designed to further build colleagues’ confidence further to call out unacceptable behaviour, including inappropriate banter.  We are sharing our approach with key suppliers and expect them to carry out their own respectful workplace training. Sub-contractors working on our sites receive guidance on respectful workplace practices during their induction. 

Reverse mentoring: We expanded our reverse mentoring programme with most members of our GMT participating in 2024. This 40 week programme partners colleagues who are black, Asian or from another ethnic minority and women working in production with members of our senior leadership team. It provides management with insight into how the policies, processes, customs, and practices of our business can impact women and those from a minority background, whilst providing employees from under-represented groups with access to advice and support to help with their career progression. 

Big Promise: In 2024, we took part in ‘The Big Promise’, an initiative developed by the Race Equality Matters (REM) network. Each of our regional businesses and key functions committed to at least one tangible and measurable action to help improve diversity, and their progress was assessed during reviews with the Group Finance Director. A range of actions were undertaken from support for cultural events, to schools outreach and participation in our reverse mentoring programme.

In 2025, we will pilot our female development programme “Aspire”, with 12 of our female Successors to Directors which aims to help participants address limiting beliefs and build their confidence in stepping to the next level.

Inclusive recruitment and retention

Inclusive recruitment practices

To reach a diverse range of candidates we have worked with the Diversity Jobs Group (a set of 10 diverse jobs boards) and have started a new partnership with Brightnetwork, an early careers network with a presence at all UK universities.

We provide diversity training for hiring managers and review our job adverts, careers site and candidate communication to ensure they are inclusive. We are committed to using diverse long lists in our recruitment processes and we track progress through our improved Recruitment system, including candidate ethnicity, gender and age.

In 2024, we also launched coaching support for any candidate shortlisted for a job with us. This will help us to build long term relationships with an external diverse talent pool.

We have a career convertors programme for people leaving the armed forces, internships for diverse candidates and a school outreach programme targeting schools with a diverse student base. Read more in Skills and development.

Agile and Flexible working

We recognise that the ability to work in an agile and flexible way can play a key role in supporting a diverse and inclusive workplace. We support many flexible working arrangements, underpinned by the expectation that employees connect in person for at least 60% of their working time.

Traditionally, it has been more challenging to offer flexible and part-time working options for some on-site roles. In 2024, we have been working on a project to explore how part time working patterns could be adapted for assistant site manager and other site-based roles. We are piloting our new approach during 2025.

Returning to work

Our Maternity and Adoption Leave Policy includes a guaranteed four-week phased return to work after maternity and adoption leave, paid at a full-time rate. Our employees are offered coaching before, during and after parental leave to help ensure a smooth return to work. This is one-to-one for directors and offered in groups for other colleagues.

Our maternity, paternity, adoption and carers leave policies exceed statutory requirements. We reviewed our family friendly policies in 2024 and further extended the amount of paid leave offered and reduced the length of service employees need to qualify.

Engaging our people on inclusion

Throughout the year we engage employees and leaders on the importance of diversity. This includes:

Due to market conditions, we recruited and employed fewer employees in 2024 this impacted our ability to make progress on our diversity targets.

Key data from the year showed that there were 33% women in our GMT (2023: 33%) and 44% women on our Board of Directors (2023: 44%). The figure for GMT and their direct reports was 26% (2023: 28%) and women made up 28% of regional business leadership roles (2023: 27%). 33% of graduates were women and women made up 14% of other early entry talent programmes.

Ethnic representation was 6.9% in our GMT and direct reports (2023: 6.9%) and 2.5% in regional business leadership roles (2023: 3.7%). 29% of graduates were from a minority ethnic background (2023: 17%) and 11% in our other early entry talent programmes (2023: 7%). While we are pleased to have increased minority ethnic representation in our early entry talent programmes, overall we are not progressing as quickly as we would like. In 2025, we will be refreshing our strategy to create a more localised approach. We aim to work more closely with community and cultural institutions close to our development sites that can help us to reach potential employees from a diverse range of backgrounds and increase awareness of careers in our sector. 

Gender pay gap

Our latest data shows that our mean gender pay gap was 8% in favour of men (2023: 6% in favour of men) and median pay gap 6% in favour of men (2023: 2% in favour of men).

The shift in our pay gap this year reflects a number of factors, including: lower levels of sales commission (due to market conditions) which impacts more female employees (women make up 81% of sales employees); larger than average pay increases for lower paid employees which impacted more male employees; and a reduction in the overall number of employees. Read more in our Diversity and Inclusion Report.

We are also preparing to calculate our ethnicity pay gap in preparation for expected regulatory requirements.