Governance
Working with our partners
As a leading UK property company, what we do impacts a lot of people. From the people that we employ, to the communities in and around our places and the wider society in which we operate.
At every stage of our business, we're committed to making responsible choices. Choices made at the right time, based on the right information, for the right reasons. And we can only achieve our targets by working with others, so we encourage our partners and suppliers to do the same. To create a safe, diverse and inclusive working environment, and incorporate the highest environmental, social and ethical standards. Because the choices we make matter.
Our 2030 commitments
SETTING HIGH STANDARDS
High ethical standards for ourselves and our partners are an expectation. From creating an ambitious and inclusive culture, where we attract and inspire the best people, to ensuring safe and fair working conditions throughout our supply chain. We’ve grown the diversity of our senior management team, across both gender and ethnicity. We’re also investing significantly in training and developing our people.
We are a Living Wage Employer – paying Real Living Wages to all our employees and requiring all our suppliers to do the same for everyone working on our behalf. Across our wider supplier network, we’ve launched a new framework with even higher environmental, social and governance standards for our places – our new Sustainability Brief. Along with anti-modern slavery training for all employees, we’ve commissioned almost 30 independent supplier audits since 2020.
This effort is reflected in the perception of British Land – with a consistently high employee engagement score and continued top rank in the Social Mobility Employer Index.
COMMITTED TO RESPONSIBILITY
Our Responsible Choices work covers a number of focus areas. Combined, they ensure we are looking at the right parts of our business and supply chain, and targeting efforts to have the biggest possible impact.
You can find more detail on our performance in our Sustainability Progress Report.
Diversity and Inclusion
Diversity, equality and inclusion is a core principle of our organisation – and something that our employees also recognise and support. 92% agree that diversity is a priority at British Land. Supported by our ten Employee Networks, we want everyone to have equal opportunities to grow and succeed, regardless of background, identity or circumstances. We continue to make progress on the diversity of our board and senior management team, across both gender and ethnicity representation, and we were delighted to again be ranked as a Top 75 company in the Social Mobility Foundation Index.
Real Living Wage
People are critical to the success of our business, paying fair wages is essential. We have achieved Living Wage Employer accreditation across our portfolio, committed to paying Real Living Wages to everyone working at our places on our behalf.
Health and Safety
The wellbeing of our people, those who work on our behalf and the thousands who work, shop or visit our places is underpinned by strong and rigorous attention to health and safety. Our health and safety management system is certified to international standard ISO 45001 across all our activities, including property development and property management. We're founding members of the Property Risk Management Forum, as well as regularly contributing to sharing health and safety management best practice alongside our peers.
Responsible Employment
As our people grow, they make us stronger as a business. We continue to invest in training and professional qualifications, spending more than £1.3m on our colleagues’ development over the past three years. This includes our bespoke Managing People training programme, mandatory for everyone who has people responsibilities.
Procurement
A strong relationship with our supplier partners helps ensure the right choices are being made throughout our network. This is governed by our mandatory Supplier Code of Conduct, which sets out clear social, ethical and environmental obligations and promotes safe and fair working conditions. We have committed to spending with small and medium sized organisations (SMEs), as research show this has a greater local economic impact than spending with large organisations.