With society placing a greater value on resilience and sustainability, we believe a responsible investment strategy to foster sustainable growth is not only the right thing to do for all our stakeholders, but makes commercial sense.

We have seen a significant shift in the financial markets to place greater attention on the financial implications of social and environmental issues. Whilst the reporting metrics and standards are in many cases still developing, we engage with our stakeholders to ensure our actions support a sustainable future economy.

Broader mega trends are also creating opportunities for John Laing, particularly the need for significant investment in fibre networks and broadband capacity to support a digital economy; there are also likely to be investment opportunities linked to the energy transition and decarbonisation of industry, including the electrification of transport.

We recognise that the context specific nature of a number of the social and environmental issues facing our projects means that we continually need to balance the tensions between socio-economic development against, and find ways to mitigate, the environmental and ecosystem impacts of its development and operational lifecycle.

Together with a cautious and responsible approach to environmental management, we equally look at project efficiencies that come from resource efficiency and improved asset resilience through effective forward planning and consideration of environmental issues. Whether this is through the use of hard-to-abate commodities such as cement, to incorporating biodiversity considerations into early project design, we know we do not yet have all the answers and will continue to collaborate with others to deliver better project outcomes.