SECTION 172 STATEMENT
Updated: 18th July 2025
Introduction
The company recognises the importance of effective corporate governance in supporting the long-term success and sustainability of the business. The company is made up of statutory directors, responsible for decisions of strategic significance and operational directors who have delegated responsibility for the day to day running of the business.
The board sets the tone for the organisation, including culture, values and behaviours that are intended to protect and promote the long-term success of the business.
The statutory directors are aware of their duty under s.172 of the Companies Act 2006 to act in the way which they consider, in good faith, would be most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its shareholders and other stakeholders. They understand the importance of identifying the impacts of their decisions and, where relevant, the likely consequences of the decisions in the long-term. The operational directors are also fully aware of these requirements.
When making principal decisions, the directors consider (amongst other matters):
• the likely consequences of any decision in the long term.
• the interests of the company’s employees.
• the need to foster the company’s business relationships with suppliers, customers, and others.
• the impact of the company’s operations on the community and the environment.
• the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct; and
• the need to act fairly between members of the company.
Stakeholder engagement
The directors have identified several key stakeholders and the engagement activities undertaken through the year.
Employees
The company’s employees are fundamental to the success of the business. The directors strive to ensure all employees feel engaged with, and listened to, about what matters to them and understand the role they play in achieving the business strategy. The working environment, health and safety, reward, training, progression, and inclusion are all areas of interest to employees, that are consistently considered and reviewed by the board.
Quarterly work forums take place within the business, between employee representatives and the CEO. The purpose of these meetings is to provide information and consultation on a range of topics including company performance, business updates, recruitment, headcount, policies, health and wellbeing and employee morale.
In addition, the business undertakes employee feedback, Town Hall meetings and board members travel consistently to overseas locations to ensure engagement with global employees.
Customers
Customer satisfaction is a priority focus for the business and is a key tenet of the company’s global brand strength. Over the past six years, the business has invested in dedicated resource and time in implementing best practice, process, and performance measurement to ensure specific customer feedback and issues are dealt with as they arise.
The business monitors customer satisfaction through a number of KPIs, including Net Promoter Score (NPS), CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) monitoring, complaints tracking (logging, time to resolution) and average first response time to all customer contact queries received online.
The company’s approach to customer feedback ensures a continuous loop between customer and all areas of the business, with scrutiny by the directors to ensure continual improvement and adherence to the company’s high standards of customer experience.
Suppliers
The company works in partnership with its key suppliers with a commitment to integrity and honesty and conducting business in a socially responsible and sustainable way.
The company’s suppliers form part of an approved audit programme supplemented with BSI Supply Chain Services and Solutions support, and compliance with ISO14001, the international standard for environmental management systems. The directors monitor suppliers conduct and can terminate a relationship in the event the supplier falls short of the standards expected.
The business has a dedicated global procurement team who focus on developing and managing relationships with suppliers. This enables the business to improve product quality, introduce regular account review meetings and generate cost savings across the company.
Local communities
Contributing to local communities, providing opportunities for local employment, and partnering with local charities is of extreme importance to the company.
The company has signed the Armed Forces Covenant, recognising the value service personnel, reservists and military families bring to our business. Through this covenant, the company agreed to seek to support veterans providing an employment pathway for service leavers, offer a degree of flexibility in granting leave for service spouses and partners in connection with deployment, support employees who choose to be part of the Reserve forces by accommodating their training and deployment where possible, offer support to local cadet units and actively participate in Armed Forces Day.
The company also partakes in Graduate and modern apprenticeship programmes. These schemes effectively allow the business to ‘grow’ its own engineers as there is a marriage between academic learning and doing the work at the same time.
Principal decisions
The directors consider principal decisions to be those that are strategic, commercially material and impact the company’s stakeholders.
Set out below are the principal decisions made on behalf of the company during the last reporting period:
Approval of dividends
• The board approved dividends throughout the last financial year totalling £27.6m.
• In reaching its decision to declare the dividends the board confirmed it considered the impact on the company’s cash position.
Throughout 2024/2025, the board will continue to review and challenge how the company can improve engagement with its employees and stakeholders.