Section 172 Statement
The Directors are fully aware of their responsibilities to promote the success of the Group in accordance with Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006 and welcome the reporting requirement in relation to Section 172.
Promoting the success of the Company for the benefit of its shareholders is of the upmost importance to the board.
Further details on how the Directors’ duties are discharged, and the oversight of these duties are included below.
The CEO of Dalkia UK, Gautier Jacob, has developed and agreed a revised strategy to 2026 which is aligned with the intention to develop Dalkia internationally through acquisition and organic growth. The growth strategy will increase the UK activities above £600m.
The board makes decisions in respect of its operations considering the impact of the Group’s operations on the community and environment and the need to maintain high standards of business conduct. In taking decisions the board also considers the impact on its supply chain, which is key to the continued success of the business, across all sectors. In advance of making any decision, Directors are presented with papers and any relevant updates in relation to the Group’s strategic priorities. The board’s priority in making strategic decisions is about what it considers to be in the long-term success of the Group, from both a financial and safety perspective, as safety remains the overriding priority. The board uses information from stakeholder engagement, including employees and suppliers, together with community and environment factors to make these strategic decisions.
The feedback from stakeholders, particularly customers, supply chain partners and employees is paramount to the board when making decisions.
The board also regularly reviews the Group’s safety performance to ensure that the Zero Harm ambition is met. This commitment means making sure that our workplaces are safe and healthy for everyone, including our employees and anyone working on our behalf.
Our Dalkia UK values
As part of the rebranding and integration exercises following the acquisition of SPIE UK, we conducted an exercise to refresh our Dalkia values in a collaborative manner where more than 1000 employees were involved.
Our Commitment to our People
At Dalkia we put people first and at our core. As a relationships-based business, we take pride in nurturing talent and building career paths that are as individual as each employee. We’re proud to have built an inclusive and diverse culture that champions the advancement of our people and supports them in maximising their potential.
Our people first culture is built around the key pillars of safety, respect, inclusivity, innovation, challenge and development.
In 2023, we did much to improve the experience of working at Dalkia. An increased focus on digitalisation of our people platforms and systems has significantly improved the accessibility and quality of our people data as well as enabling managers and individuals to have greater visibility and control of their own and their teams information.
Changing Gear is Dalkia’s programme for building an inclusive health, safety and wellbeing culture that drives continuous improvement and step change in performance to drive our 2026 strategic ambitions.
Over the last 12 months, we have worked closely with our charity partner (MIND) and external specialists to develop offerings that support a positive approach to wellbeing in our organisation.
Despite significant challenges in being able to offer flexible working practices in many of our client facing environments, we recognise the importance our people place on this so have worked closely with those teams to identify opportunities to introduce flexible options wherever possible. Hybrid working is well established in our office environments.
Our Mental Health First Aider programme is well recognised across all areas of our business with over 100 of our staff qualified to be MHFA’s. We continue to develop our approach to supporting them in the critical work they do.
Our commitment to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) has seen significant benefits in terms of representation across our business. We have increased numbers of women in leadership roles during 2023 and we are seeing this trend continue during 2024 with the appointment of two female directors in the first quarter of this year. Our ED&I Champions Forum is now well established and action plans are in place for each business unit designed to target specific areas of our workforce. We continue to review and improve our benefits and people policies to ensure we can demonstrate and support our value of People at our core.
Our commitment to enabling people to build their skills and careers withing Dalkia continues to be one of our key strategic focuses with investment in both leadership and technical development increasing in 2023. The annual engagement survey scores reflect the value our people place on this and the recognition of the quality of the offerings provided.
We continue to develop our early career offerings and has seen a significant increase in applications and appointments of craft and professional apprenticeships at all levels across the business. We are now planning for a new graduate programme to commence in 2024.
Leadership development remains a critical focus for us to ensure we can continue to deliver our ambitions and support our growth agenda. We have continued to invest in the development of existing and new programmes for management and leadership with a particular focus on first line leaders so we are building the capability from the beginning of individuals careers.
We established three new specialist skill academies during 2023 and will continue to focus on the development of critical technical skills throughout the rest of 2024 to provide the focus we need on attracting, retaining and developing our critical skills talent.
Our Commitment to our Clients
In 2023, we continued to focus on delivering for our client partnerships. We are investing in the relationships we enjoy with a wide range of public and private sector partners, while creating new partnerships and broadening our reach.
We recognise the importance of delivering for our customers and positioning for repeat business and new work. We are continuously focused to get closer to our markets, improve our services to existing clients and better understand their requirements, and strive for operational excellence.
Management at all levels continue to work to develop, maintain and strengthen relationships with new and existing customers by delivering high levels of customer satisfaction and value, supporting our ambition to become ’trusted partners’ in all the markets we operate.
In 2023, we worked on an extensive survey across our UK business to ask clients for their feedback, including from the recently acquired SPIE UK business. Overall, the results showed that in the majority of key areas satisfaction was very good (overall satisfaction level of 84%). We were rated as ‘above the market norm’ in many areas, particularly in safety, quality of service and our relationships with customers. We were also able to identify areas where we can add more value as a group to support our clients to achieve their Net Zero ambitions.
The rebranding to Dalkia in July 2023 has been successful, increasing our visibility on the market and demonstrating our commitment to support UK’s Net Zero objectives.
Our Commitment to our Suppliers and Partners
As a purpose-led, responsible organisation, Dalkia exists to create better outcomes for all stakeholders, including our suppliers and partners, with whom we seek to build lasting relationships, treating them fairly, while encouraging them to deliver.
An annual supplier event was held in London in June 2023. The event allowed us to communicate the progress and strategy of the business with all invited to the event. It also provided an opportunity to the supply chain and partners to have open dialogue with senior members of our leadership team.
Dalkia has in place a supplier credit facility with Santander, which is underwritten by our parent company EDF UK. The facility allows suppliers to draw payment for approved invoices ahead of agreed payment terms, the use of the facility is purely at the discretion of the supplier and Dalkia receives no benefit.
Our Commitment to Society and the Environment
During the period Dalkia UK employed over 4000 people within the UK, and we strongly believe it is our collective responsibility to make a positive impact, in our local workplaces, in the communities where we operate, and on the environment that we all share.
In line with the Company’s vision ‘Together, we are delivering technical solutions for a better society and a Net Zero UK’, the Company is monitoring the progress of the Net Zero strategy through a Net Zero Committee and reviewing climate change risks and opportunities throughs the Risk Committee.
Our ambition to become carbon neutral for our own operations by 2030 (scope 1 and 2) is underpinned by a clear action plan validated by the Board.
In 2023, we implemented various key initiatives to reduce our carbon footprint: we installed our Connect energy monitoring solutions in our main offices with the objective to reduce by more than 15% our energy consumption, we installed solar panels at Capula’s offices to produce local renewable electricity, and we continued to roll out electric vans.
We consider that we have a role to play in sustainability and in enabling the UK’s transition helping EDF achieve a net zero carbon future for everyone and ensuring inclusivity truly exists within all our teams.
By raising awareness, partaking in numerous reputable events and encouraging business funded community days, we are dedicated to proactively making a difference. As we continue to grow, achieving our business goals and financial targets can only be assessed as a true success if we work in a sustainable way to help our society.
Our commitment to supporting our employee’s overall wellbeing remains a core part of our social value responsibility plan. Changing Gear and our charity partnership with Mind will allow us to ensure mental health remains a priority. Collectively we raised £54k for Mind in 2023 through various fundraising activities.
The Future
Being part of the EDF Group provides us with support and backing to accelerate our growth plans, by giving us access to new customers and new innovative technologies.
We bring to EDF our experience and skill around delivering complex technical projects, our UK national presence and reputation in mechanical and electrical engineering, technical maintenance, and our systems integration capabilities.
We believe that working in close collaboration with EDF provides us the opportunity to occupy a unique market position in the UK. Dalkia’s skills and experience can support EDF’s delivery of services, as well as offer our current and new clients an exciting range of innovative new services and technologies.
Looking forward there are a number of factors which will make the market volatile including inflationary pressures arising from the Ukraine crisis and the longer-term implications of Brexit. Being part of EDF makes our Group more resilient.
Finally, we would like to take the opportunity to thank our clients and suppliers for their continuing support and we look forward to working together to build long term relationships in order to always add more value to our clients.