Partnership housing provider Lovell has released its new Responsible Business Report, underlining the company’s sustainability credentials.
Highlights include that women make up more than a quarter of the company’s 915 employees — at 26.9% the proportion is more than double the industry average. (According to ONS statistics, women represent just 12.8% of the overall national construction workforce).
Other key achievements include:
- A 25% reduction in the company’s rate of carbon emissions (calculated against turnover) since 2015 and a 57% reduction since 2010.
- A record health and safety performance with the company’s lowest-ever accident rates, including a RIDDOR accident frequency rate of 0.13.
- 95% of construction waste diverted from landfill (2015: 89.5%).
- On average, for every £1 spend on its developments, Lovell generated £2.09 for the local community.
- Lovell staff volunteered at 263 community projects with the company also donating 3,692 hours of staff time and contributing more than £124,000 to community initiatives.
The company achieved three Gold Considerate Constructors Scheme (CCS) awards; 31 Silver CCS awards and 75 Bronze. The CCS awards are only given to construction firms which show high levels of consideration in their project delivery.
Lovell recruited 15 graduates and 53 management trainees in 2016. Pictured above is Amanda Hooey, who joined Lovell 13 years ago as a Bricklayer and is now a Site Manager.
Lovell Managing Director Jonathan Goring said: “As a forward-thinking, responsible business, looking after communities, the environment and our own people are a central part of everything we do. This report highlights some of the actions we’re taking to keep improving our performance as a sustainable and socially responsible business.
“I’m very pleased that we’re out-performing industry norms in a number of key areas, an achievement which reflects the hard work of our teams across the UK and their commitment to ensuring we have a positive impact on the communities where we work and the wider world. But we’re far from complacent: the report also sets out our continuing strategy to bring about further improvements, including our 2017 War on Waste campaign, which is continuing to successfully drive down our waste production.”
Initiatives detailed in the 2016 Responsible Business Report include Lovell’s pioneering uses of LM3 — a system which enables the company to demonstrate the economic boost which its housing projects bring to local communities by showing where the project income is spent. The report also looks at Lovell’s work in attracting under-represented groups, including women, into the industry and its focus on encouraging its supply chain to work as sustainably as possible.
As part of Morgan Sindall Group, Lovell’s approach to being a responsible and sustainable business is structured through the Group’s five Total Commitments which provide an action plan for developing sustainable practices and measuring progress. The Total Commitments are: protecting people; improving the environment; working together with the supply chain; developing people, and enhancing communities.
Read the full Lovell Responsible Business Report here.
