Highlights:

• Profit before tax and amortisation £26.1 million (2013: 16.2 million)
  
• Turnover at £1.26 billion (2013: £1.02 billion)
  
• Net balance sheet of £164.8 million (2013: £147.7 million)
  
• Cash and liquid investments at £76.1 million (2013: £70.2 million)
  
• Secured forward order book at £1.4 billion (at March 2015)
  
• 92% of Group’s budgeted work secured for 2015 (at March 2015)
  
• 2,500 homes in development for market sale and PRS
  
• Residential construction capability expands into North
  
• Energy Services now active in Leeds, Hull and Bristol
  
• £2.27 million invested in community in 2014*
  

2014 Report and Accounts
Willmott Dixon’s Group Chief Executive Rick Willmott says: “Work volumes and turnover grew substantially in 2014, reflecting our focus on repeat business, strengthening our market share on frameworks and using innovations like our Sunesis school solution with Scape and our private rent homes product through Be:here to provide real solutions for schools and housing.

A major highlight was being confirmed as development partner for Brentford FC, where we will deliver a 20,000 seat stadium and nearly 1,000 new homes by combining market sale with homes for private rent in a multi-phase housing regeneration scheme on a brownfield site close to Kew Bridge with the potential to create a transformational impact on local growth and prosperity.

Another achievement I am personally very proud about is the £2.27 million invested last year through our people in support of initiatives that improve the lives of others – up 65% from the previous year. I believe passionately that our company has a purpose beyond profit and, with its scale, a real opportunity to be a catalyst for positive change wherever we work. This is not only done through what we build and maintain; it’s achieved through the fantastic efforts of all our people who make a major contribution to enhancing their local communities.”

Talking about companies within the Group, Rick says:

Construction: turnover £753m
“Construction is the core of our business and key highlights have been a further strengthening of our work in the universities sector with large projects for Bournemouth, West London and Birmingham universities where we are using our skills for working in live environments to create better, more efficient premises that allow these universities to attract students in a highly competitive market. Also, our roll-out of Sunesis continues, with 23 orders for schools that are creating 9,000 new places at significant cost and time savings for local authorities.

We are also expanding our work in the science and technology sector with facilities like the RAL Space Technology laboratory in Oxfordshire which will expand UK expertise in the satellite and space exploration industry.

Our skill-sets to deliver large projects that are a catalyst for town centre regeneration also increased; following our track-record on large projects like Tesco’s Woolwich Central, we can now add Keynsham Civic Centre, Redcar Community Heart and Flemingate in Beverley as examples where our projects stimulate important inward investment for regional economies.

Interiors: turnover £74m
Our interior fit out company continues to grow market share with a diverse range of projects of increasing scale and intensity such as our £20 million fit-out at the Cockcroft building for Brighton University. National ‘roll-out’ programmes for Travelodge and Barclays continue to provide repetition and predictability of opportunity and we have not lost sight of clients’ need for low carbon expertise; our fit-out of No 4 The Square, Stockley Park for Legal & General was first non-domestic refurbishment and fit-out to achieve the 2014 BREEAM Excellent rating.

Residential
The Residential sector team has been assembled to maximise the synergy that exists between our residential construction and development sister companies operating in a strong housing market.

Residential – construction: turnover £279m
Despite the dangers of a market in recovery and a year of consolidation in the South East, our residential construction activities have seen strong expansion into the North West with new housing projects on site in Liverpool with Liverpool Mutual Homes and Manchester with Trafford Housing Trust. Our focus on the Midlands and the North has seen our team progress from a ‘start-up’ in 2012 to achieving turnover of £54m in 2014.

We are also delivering significant volume for our own development businesses, Prime Place and Be:here. Phase one of Aberfeldy Village, building over 300 homes as part of the 1,176 home regeneration of a seven acre site in Tower Hamlets with Poplar HARCA, is now complete, while our 132 home scheme for Prime Place in Godalming and a further 118 homes for Be:here in Hayes are taking shape. We are now focused on starting work early next year on Brentford FC’s large development near Kew Bridge.

Residential – development: turnover £113m
Our in-house developer Regen incorporates Prime Place, our private for sale residential development company and Be:here, our private for rent residential development company

These complementary companies will often work alongside each other to provide an unrivalled solution for housing biased developments and regeneration projects where phasing can be streamlined or ideally eliminated to hasten the creation of sustainable, thriving communities. This will be supported through our proven ability to develop and build large scale mixed-tenure projects with complementary funding solutions. Recently secured developments at Kew Bridge and Barking, together providing over 1,500 homes, are good examples of the future direction of our residential development focus.

This capability to develop homes for sale and private rent simultaneously sets us apart from rivals and we have used it to effectively accelerate the Aberfeldy Village regeneration by two years. I hope we can use this further as one of the five companies on the newly awarded Social Infrastructure Development framework.

Support Services: turnover £143m
Our long-term contracts to repair and maintain over 150,000 homes give us great scope to create substantial social legacy in many towns and cities. This includes equipping young people with the skills they need to thrive in the workplace and examples of our work through the Partnerships brand include 26,618 hours of training placements, with seven people using these placements to secure full time work through our Opening Doors programme. Also, we have 58 apprentices being trained to NVQ level and all are a testament to the potential so many young people have when given the chance to show it.

Our Energy Services brand was appointed by Hull City Council for a £60 million Green Deal and ECO partnership to deliver energy improvements to 3,000 homes across the city. This also were selected for “Better Homes Yorkshire” programme to deliver efficiency improvements to over 12,000 homes across the Leeds City Region and more recently on a similar scheme in Bristol for another 3,000 homes.

Looking to the future
“This year we begin to realise some of the opportunities we have been targeting strategically over a number of years, from our growth as a housing developer of scale to our role on a number of major frameworks such as Scape, the Southern Construction Framework and Social Infrastructure Development framework. They all link us with like-minded clients who want to work with a company and its people who are totally focused on providing high quality outcomes for their requirements.

At the same time we remain focused on being a company that our supply chain wants to work with, and I’m delighted that our EarlyPay system, to speed up payments to suppliers, has been taken up by over 120 companies with £170 million of spend already going through EarlyPay since we set it up last year.”