Willmott Dixon has secured its second Queen's Award for Enterprise for sustainable development.

HM The Queen's representative for Hertfordshire visited the company's head office in Letchworth Garden City to deliver the accolade. This recognises the firm's commitment to reduce the environmental impact of its own activities and those of its supply chain.

Willmott Dixon's sustainable achievements include: reducing carbon emissions relative to turnover by 59 per cent since 2010; cutting construction waste intensity by 57% since 2012: and being carbon neutral for the sixth year running.

This latest recognition by the Queen's Awards for Enterprise follows a first award in 2014 for sustainable development, and an accolade for Promoting Opportunity in 2018. To mark the Queen's Awards hat trick, the Lord-Lieutenant of Hertfordshire presented a scroll to Willmott Dixon chief executive Rick Willmott with a message from HM The Queen.


The company's chief executive, Rick Willmott said: "This week's UN Climate Action Summit was a timely reminder of the urgent action needed to tackle the affects we are seeing of global warming. The last four years were the four hottest on record, and the impacts of climate change are being felt everywhere with real consequences on people's lives.

"As well as action taken by nation states to influence how we reverse the rise in carbon emissions to safeguard future generations from the issues that come with climate change, business too needs to play a part. That's why we will continue to invest and lead in new ways to become more sustainable and reduce our environmental footprint over and above our current status of being a carbon neutral company. Today's presentation of our third Queen's Award for Enterprise will act as a further catalyst for how we set ourselves even more challenging science-based carbon targets, which will place us on a trajectory to be a zero emissions – or even carbon positive – business by 2050."

(CM/JG)