New figures have revealed that Amey doubled its social enterprise spend to over £2m last year.

During the 2018 financial year, Amey spent over £2m across its supply chain on companies who use their profits to create positive social change in communities across the UK and overseas. The figure is more than double what was paid in 2017, when £930,000 went to suppliers sharing this ethical purpose.

John Cully, chief procurement officer at Amey said: “We are very proud to have reached such a significant milestone for social enterprise spend. We still have much more we want to achieve but our work is testament to a belief that public services can be delivered with social, environmental and economic benefits at the heart. Not only does working with social enterprises support incredibly worthy causes, it also provides fantastic value to the taxpayer, ensuring each public pound invested in infrastructure goes even further.”

A further £1.6m was also spent on social enterprises by Amey’s joint ventures including GEOAmey, KeolisAmey and Amey Sersa. Amey say the increase reflects the diverse range of social enterprises joining the company’s supply chain, whether suppliers of staff, services or materials. 

New to Amey for 2018 was WildHearts Office who, through supplying Amey’s office stationery, fund wide ranging initiatives from addressing social mobility in the UK, to supporting gender equality in the developing world.

WildHearts join suppliers such as Britain’s Bravest Manufacturing Company, a social enterprise run by the charity Royal British Legion Industries (RBLI), which provides employment to ex-forces personnel and people with health conditions or disabilities. The RBLI were able to employ two full time employees last year purely through business from Amey’s highways business, for whom they manufacture road signs.

In 2017, Amey joined the Buy Social Corporate Challenge, an initiative which saw businesses commit to collectively spending £1bn with social enterprises by 2020. 

Peter Holbrook, chief executive of Social Enterprise UK said: “Since joining the challenge, Amey has shown a genuine commitment to working with social enterprises, highlighted by them winning the Buy Social Market Builder Award at the UK Social Enterprise Awards last year. We welcome their improved spend figure for 2018, the benefits of which will be realised by some of the most vulnerable people in the UK and overseas. We look forward to continuing to work with Amey to further embed social value into their supply chain.”

In 2019 Amey will spend around £1.5bn with over 4,500 goods and materials suppliers, services suppliers and subcontractors. 75% of these are SMEs, including social enterprises.