Supply Chain Governance
Working together to build a sustainable, ethical supply chain.
We continue to support both our internal teams and supply chain with a dedicated training and development plan, supported by our ongoing partnerships with the Supply Chain Sustainability School (SCSS) and Slave-free Alliance.
Our Procurement, Contract Management and Capital Commercial teams have completed the sustainable procurement training by SCSS.
Comprehensive learning pathways on key sustainability issues will be launched in 2025 to build further capability across our internal teams, and we will look to extend this to our supplier partners in the future.
Collaboration and engagement with key industry groups and partnerships continues to be essential in addressing shared challenges and identifying solutions that support ambitious, and evolving, environmental and social impact commitments.
In 2024/25 we ran a sustainability focused supplier engagement day to collaborate with and support a key cross-section of suppliers across our sustainability ambitions and outline our ambitions for AMP8.
Our ambitious business plan for the next 5 years will require even greater collaboration with our supply chain partners, therefore we have developed a programme of sustainability deep dives with suppliers over the coming year.
Our responsibility to suppliers
None of what we do as a business would be possible without our supply chain partners. Sustainability is integral to our business, and our suppliers are critical in helping us to reach the ambitious goals we set ourselves.
Therefore, we aim to embed sustainability throughout our procurement processes and to work collaboratively with our supply chain partners to ensure they understand our goals and can support us, whilst help them to build their own capabilities.
AMP8 will see a significant step-up in investments through our £14.9 billion Plan. Therefore, it is crucial that we foster a positive relationship with our supply chain to ensure we have access to the knowledge and expertise to design and deliver the right solutions for our customers and communities, in a sustainable way.
Ensuring Supplier Standards Match Our Own
At the core of our approach is our Sustainable Procurement Statement and our Sustainable Supply Chain Charter which set out our approach and minimum standards that we expect all our supply chain partners to follow. In addition to the Sustainable Supply Chain Charter, we expect our suppliers to align with our approach to worker welfare and modern slavery, paying the Real Living Wage to those working for us via our contracts and operating in a fair and inclusive manner.
Our dedicated Supply Chain Sustainability team work closely to embed the principles of sustainable procurement through stronger governance procedures and a dedicated engagement programme with our supply chain to set expectations and collaborate on improvements. A tailored and proportionate approach to supplier assessment and engagement allows us to target the areas of biggest risk and opportunity.
In addition, we have developed stronger governance procedures to ensure sustainability considerations form part of commercial decision making, including mandatory sustainability sign-off in sourcing strategies and Key Performance Measures (KPMs) for our Capital suppliers in which performance is linked to the allocation of work.