Our material issues

 

In an ever-changing world, it’s important that we understand and respond to the shifting global challenges that may influence our business and the issues that matter most to our stakeholders.

To revise our sustainability framework, in FY 2021/22 we partnered with Salterbaxter to consult with over 230 customers, investors, community groups and colleagues, listening to what they believe are the issues we should be prioritising and addressing.
 
We prioritised these issues according to their importance to our business (relevance to the delivery of our corporate strategy and how we create value in the short, medium and long-term) and their importance to our stakeholders.
 
Though all issues are important and are addressed within our strategy, the review highlighted our high-priority issues as shown in our materiality matrix. Our material issues are:

- Climate change and sustainable design (including resource efficiency): the built environment contributes 38% of global carbon emissions, we have a moral and commercial imperative to tackle the climate crisis - reducing the emissions from our operational assets and our construction activities. Doing this will ensure that we stay ahead of environmental legislation (e.g. UK's Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES)), meet growing occupier and investor demand for spaces that meet high environmental standards and enable us to reduce the risk of inevitable climate change and reap the benefits of reduced operational costs.

- Business ethics (health, safety and wellbeing and human rights): stakeholders are calling for action to address mounting environmental and social issues looking for businesses to have a purpose beyond just making profit. We employ c.114k people (directly and indirectly) across our portfolio - we have a duty of care to provide a safe and healthy working environment and pay a fair wage to all colleagues - this ensures we have an engaged and productive workforce. 

- Diversity and inclusion: movements such as Black Lives Matter have heightened stakeholder expectations on what we are doing internally to address diversity at all levels. Additionally, as curators of places - our business and industry needs to reflect the diversity of the communities we serve and we are expected to use our platform in society to listen and engage with our local communities empowering them to lead change in the places they know best.

 These issues are reflected in our principal risks where we monitor progress against Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) and ensure mitigation actions are in place.

Our strategy and materiality review updates are reviewed by our Executive Leadership Team and Board. See more detail on our sustainability governance here. To ensure that our material issues remain relevant, we are committed to reviewing them every two years or in light of significant organisational change. 

Mapping our material risks
H&S risks 2023
People and skills risks 2023
Climate Change risks 2023