“For a decade, Carillion has put substantial and muchneeded sums of money into conservation. It has helped to fund projects and schemes which are enhancing, restoring and reviving some of the UK’s most precious habitats.”

Stephanie Hilborne, Chief Executive, The Wildlife Trusts

Biodiversity

When species are threatened, ecosystems suffer and humanity is impacted. Protecting biodiversity is essential.

Any company that owns land has a responsibility to safeguard the variety of animal and plant species – or biodiversity – on that land. Although Carillion does not own significant areas of land, many of our projects are on or near locations with specific biodiversity issues. Working within our environmental management systems and our Sustainability Excellence Model, we draw up biodiversity action plans for such projects. These are documents setting out the biodiversity sensitivities of the site and identifying action plans to address any risks. We set ourselves a target that biodiversity risk assessments would be undertaken for 88% of our relevant projects in 2009. We achieved 100% in our UK Building business, 88% in Services and 43% in Infrastructure. Each business group now has improvement plans in place to achieve 100% during 2010.

To put our action plans into practice, we need employees to be aware of biodiversity issues. So we provide various training courses as well as delivering Toolbox Talks. The latter provide staff with all the information they need on the different species that they may encounter and the actions that should be taken to protect them. As a result of our employees’ attentiveness, we had no significant impacts on species populations in 2009.

In addition to protecting biodiversity on our sites, we also actively foster biodiversity through the Carillion Natural Habitats Fund. The fund was set up in 2000 to support biodiversity projects across the UK. So far, 44 projects have benefited from a total of £255,000. As priority is given to projects near Carillion sites, many have also benefited from the loan of equipment and our employees volunteering to help.

In 2009, the fund selected six projects to support. Habitats are being created for amphibians in Birmingham and water voles in London and Sheffield; Staffordshire heath land has been cleared of unwanted saplings; an otter holt has been built in Suffolk; and dunes are being restored in Lancashire.