The Investors in People review assessment of Sandwood's attitude towards diversity stated that the company has

"an incredibly positive approach to diversity which is highly unusual for the sector and which leads to not only a more diverse workforce on obvious grounds such as gender and ethnicity, but also to a real respect for the strengths and merits of each individual."

Diversity is not just about ethnicity or gender but recognises and appreciates differences and individuality. However the former two are relatively easy to measure. At Sandwood, 9% of our London workforce is from ethnic minority backgrounds; 13% are female. At site level we now have three female operatives, two carpenters and one decorator, the most recent of these recruits being Sarah Jones. Sarah, a mother of two from West London, was a BTEC Level 2 Bench joinery student at Acton and West London College when she was chosen from a group of apprentices for full time employment with Sandwood as a carpenter. Sarah is pictured with Sandwood's Construction Manager James Millen on the left and Martin Walsh, our foreman decorator, on the right.

It is clear from the statistics that we have much to do and we are taking further steps to address some of these imbalances. Through our involvement with Barking and particularly West London College, we are involved in recruiting more women site workers through work experience and apprenticeships, and we are having some success. At site manager and trainee site manager level, the availability of good quality ethnic minority candidates has improved significantly but there does seem to be a lack of ethnic minority applicants for trade apprenticeships.

We are looking at ways we can address the problem through our recruitment and selection process.