Annual Report and Accounts 2010

Selecting land

Land is the critical 'raw material' for our business and the ability to purchase the right sites in the right locations at the right price is a key driver of shareholder value.

We employ land teams in each of our regional businesses in the UK and North America, who use their experience, local knowledge and industry contacts to identify potential acquisitions.

In addition, we have a team of strategic land experts in the UK who are tasked with identifying areas where population growth, or other local demand, could create opportunities to promote land with no current planning consent through the planning system.

Optimising development value

Designing a sustainable community that meets the needs of local residents, is attractive to potential customers and provides attractive returns for shareholders requires a consultative and iterative process of community engagement.

We have a strong track record of consultation with local residents prior to developing large scale communities, such as Great Western Park, Didcot. We are benefiting from this knowledge and experience across our UK business in preparation for the implementation of the Localism Bill during 2011. See UK Housing landbank for further details.

As part of this iterative process, we are able to identify the best use of land to meet the needs of local residents, ensure that we have a mix of homes that meet market demand and that the site is optimised for safe, efficient and considerate development.

Getting the homebuilding basics right

We work with selected sub-contractors and build using carefully sourced materials to ensure that the homes that we sell are of a high quality and are built safely, efficiently, cost effectively and with minimal impact on the environment.

We are committed to providing a safe place in which our employees and sub-contractors can work. We are also committed to high standards of environmental management.

The building process is carefully managed by our site-based and regional production teams to ensure quality and to minimise disruption to residents in the surrounding areas.

Caring about our customers

We recognise that buying a house is a significant financial and emotional investment. We aim to make buying, moving into and living in a Taylor Wimpey home as easy as possible for our customers.

We focus on continually improving our standards of customer care and our customer experience through:

• regular market research to identify customer requirements;
• tailoring our range of incentives to help customers make their purchase;
• helping customers navigate the process of selling their existing home and moving into their new home; and
• benchmarking our performance in industry customer care surveys to identify opportunities for further improvements.