Supply chain partners ‧ Taylor Wimpey

Our approach

We engage our suppliers and subcontractors to contribute towards growth, innovation, cost efficiency, and sustainability, to support our delivery of quality homes and places. Suppliers and subcontractors play a critical role in our business, providing the materials we use to build our homes and most of the labour force working on our sites.

Our approach includes:

Responsible sourcing
Working with suppliers on environmental issues
Human rights and modern slavery
Subcontractor engagement
Future skills

Responsible sourcing

Our Supply Chain Policy sets standards for suppliers on safety, quality, ethics, human rights and the environment. Our Supplier Code of Conduct requires suppliers to respect workers’ human rights and prohibits all forms of modern slavery. It is embedded into our Framework Agreements with Group suppliers, those managed by our Group procurement team. We conduct an annual risk assessment of our Group supply chain, with each Group supplier assigned a risk rating based on factors including cost and security of supply, as well as ESG-related risks. This enables us to prioritise higher-risk suppliers for engagement and follow-up.

Working with suppliers on environmental issues

We work with suppliers to reduce the environmental impacts of the materials used to build our homes. We use a range of recycled materials in our homes, such as our insulation made from recycled glass, and increasingly consider embodied carbon in tender processes for carbon-intensive materials. Our Sustainable Timber Policy commits us to procure timber and timber products from well-managed forests with full chain of custody certification from either the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). We survey Group timber suppliers annually to confirm compliance with our policy.

Human rights and modern slavery

We respect the human rights of employees, workers in our supply chain, customers, local communities and others affected by our business activities. We are guided by international standards such as the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. We do not tolerate any form of slavery, forced labour, child labour or human trafficking in our business or supply chain. We have two e-learning modules for employees to raise awareness of modern slavery risks and we require our tier 1 suppliers to confirm their compliance with our modern slavery policy during the tender process.

Subcontractor engagement

Subcontractors provide essential labour, trades and services to our construction sites. We work closely with subcontractors to ensure they meet our standards in areas such as health and safety, build quality, inclusion, customer service and the real living wage. Many of our subcontractors are small, local and family-run businesses and working with them supports the local economy around our sites. We hold regular engagement and ‘Meet the Buyer’ events to help SME businesses to work with us and we support them to comply with our policies.

Future skills

Our industry is facing a skills shortage due to an ageing workforce and a shortfall in the number of young people joining, particularly in the skilled trades workforce. We work closely with our sub-contractors and others within and beyond our sector to understand changing skills needs, attract more people into our industry and ensure the right training is in place to address any skills gaps. To promote careers in our sector, each of our regional businesses has a schools engagement plan, and we run regular school visits, interactive events and assemblies, careers talks and workshops and work with universities and colleges.