Okay. Shall we kick off then, ladies and gentlemen? Good afternoon to everyone, and welcome to Kier Group plc's Capital Markets Day. It's fantastic to see so many of you here in person. I'm Andrew Davies, I'm the Chief Executive of Kier Group, and I'm joined today by Simon K esterton, our Chief Financial Officer, as well as our senior leadership team. Little bit of housekeeping, if I may, just to start. Firstly, if there are no fires planned, I should say. No fire drills planned. There's certainly no fires planned. So if it goes off, I think assume it's real. The escape routes are that way and that way, where there's clearly marked escape route, and you go down the stairs and convene outside by the church at the front. That's the fire drill.
We're excited to share with you an overview of the business and, most importantly, allow you to hear from the managing directors of our business units and our functional leaders. We also have some activities and fly-through video footage to help you learn about the projects we undertake. These range from significant earthworks currently in process on High Speed 2 in our Infrastructure Projects business, to building Her Majesty's Prison Five Wells prison in Wellingborough using modern methods of construction, or MMC. I'll walk you through the agenda for today and our equity story. I'll then hand over to Simon, and he'll walk you through our medium-term plan. This will be followed by breakout sessions with our senior leadership teams across the five stands to my right and to my left.
We'll wrap up the day with some Q&A, followed by some wine tasting and canapés. With that, I will turn to slide 3, which hopefully you can see. A short introduction before we start it. I joined Kier in April 2019. Just raise those a bit. Prior to that, I was Chief Executive Officer of Wates Group, the construction, development, and property services group. Prior to leaving Wates, I spent 28 years with BAE Systems defence company, undertaking a range of senior roles, including Group Strategy Director and latterly their Managing Director of their maritime division. I'll allow Simon to introduce himself when he speaks later. I'll just wait for these gents to turn it around. Excellent. Thank you. We set out our objectives for today.
Firstly, you'll hear from us about Kier's purpose, and our purpose is to sustainably deliver infrastructure which is vital to U.K., as set out in our group strategy. We'll then share with you why we have confidence in our medium-term plan and the significant market opportunities available to us through U.K. government spending commitments that underpin the plan. Most importantly, after spending time with our senior leadership team, I'm hoping you'll see the breadth and depth of our operational capability that will deliver that plan. The agenda. This slide five sets out today's agenda. After hearing from Simon and myself, you'll have the opportunity to rotate around our five stands. On stand one, we have ESG. Stand two is our Regional Build and Kier Places business. Stand three, Infrastructure Projects and risk management. Stand four, Highways and Utilities. Stand five, urban regeneration and property development.
You should all have been given a number on your name badge when you arrived, so please head to the stand with that number when we finish up with the formal introductory presentations. For example, if you have number one on your name badge, please go to stand one. If you have number two, please go to stand two. And so on. If you don't have a number on your badge, please could you just head straight for Sophie Timms. Stand up, Sophie, please. You can't miss Sophie. She will allocate you to a stand. Apologies if we missed the odd number out, but Sophie will sort you out, so please do that.
What we'll do, we'll move around in groups around the stands and, we'll change order every 25 minutes, so all guests will get an opportunity to spend time with each of our stand holders and hopefully get some quality time to ask questions on their respective businesses, or ESG, in respect of Helen and Sophie. With that, we'll turn to this slide, the current trading. We issued a trading update yesterday morning ahead of today's Capital Markets Day. Kier has performed well over the last four months through 30 April 2022, despite the inflationary pressures we're seeing. We are trading in line with expectations. Our order book has grown to GBP 8.5 billion, an increase of 6% from that we announced in 31 December 2021.
Our recent contract awards include an early works contract at Alderney Water Treatment Works in Bournemouth, which will lead to a GBP 75 million contract, a place on the GBP 30 billion ProCure23 framework in our construction business, and we're also selected as a partner by Mole Valley District Council on the GBP 350 million urban regeneration scheme for Leatherhead town centre. These recent awards and others support why we believe the medium-term plan targets are achievable. We have seen a steady increase in cost inflation through the year. At present, we've not experienced any supply chain problems in the business. However, we are seeing certain projects being reappraised and therefore delayed due to cost pressures. There are a number of mitigations we can deploy in these circumstances.
In terms of protection against cost inflation, 55% of our order book is under target cost or cost- reimbursable contracts, for example, HS2. The remainder of our contracts are negotiated contracts, including those on fixed prices. Those fixed price contracts are often fixed at a point in the project cycle when procurement risk has passed, thereby protecting against inflation risk on the project. Another mitigation is the average contract size in our construction business of GBP 12 million. They tend to be relatively short in duration, over 12 months, so therefore tend to get renegotiated and therefore repriced regularly. We also look to pass through any cost inflationary pressures up to our customers under the long-term frameworks, but also down to our supply chain partners where we're able to and where they're best able to mitigate and manage that risk.
If we look at the economic and political landscape in the U.K., we see the U.K. economic and political landscape as a set of short-term issues and long-term positive fundamentals. Short-term headwinds include cost inflation, Ukraine, fears of an economic downturn, as well as supply chain and labour supply challenges. In the long term, however, the business is underpinned by the U.K. government's commitment to spending the Levelling Up agenda, the commitment to net zero carbon, and the desire to create a global Britain. Given our business is countercyclical and Kier is a strategic supplier to the U.K. government, over the medium term, we believe there's significant opportunity to drive growth and successfully execute in this market. We also believe we are proactively addressing the supply chain, and in particular, the labour supply issues through the positive approach we have to the ESG agenda.
If we look at the Kier Group, an overview. This summarizes, for those of you not as familiar with the Kier Group as others, what we do, how we do it, as well as showing a few key metrics on the business. We are an infrastructure and construction services supplier with approximately 100 years of experience. We integrate all aspects of a project, our predominant capabilities being in design, project management, commercial, supply chain, and build, as well as in people and resource management. We have simplified our business over the last two years, so it is well-positioned to take advantage of the market opportunities which I'll outline in this presentation. Here we set out our three reporting segments, Infrastructure Services, Construction, and Property. Infrastructure Services is made up of three businesses.
Infrastructure Projects, which are high-value, highly complex civil engineering projects, HS2. Highways, which designs, constructs, and maintains roads. Utilities, which repairs, maintains, and supports capital projects. Our Construction business has two business units, Regional Build and Kier Places. Last but not least, we have our Property business, which is focused on urban regeneration and redevelopment. Kier has been on a journey over the last three years, and this slide summarizes the significant work done to turn around the business and address the legacy issues of the old Kier business culture, cost control, contracts, and the balance sheet problems. These were addressed through decisive management actions that I set out in the June 2019 strategic review, whereby we targeted three strategic areas. Firstly, to simplify the business. Secondly, to generate cash. Finally, to strengthen the balance sheet.
We've had a number of senior management changes over the past 24 months and refreshed both the executive team and the board. Secondly, operational improvements ranging from addressing the legacy contracts through to contract tendering processes to portfolio rationalization. We simplified the business, and we went back to basics, substantially exiting from commercial FM, Environmental Services, International, and the house building business. Indeed, we sold the house building business, Living, and thereafter recapitalized the balance sheet with an equity raise and extended the maturity of our debt facilities, thus fixing the immediate balance sheet issues. Our focus is now strongly on delivering the medium-term plan through growth in our core markets, supported by, as I said, U.K. government spending commitments. Excuse me. This is Kier Group's strategic framework, and it sets out our strategy. That's the blue bit, the roof at the top.
As well as setting out the strategic actions that underpin the strategy and the key enablers. Our strategy has not changed since it was originally drawn in 2019, but the three strategic actions originally set out, as I mentioned earlier, have been delivered. We have three new actions to support the medium-term plan. In summary, we are focused on U.K. government, regulated and blue-chip client base. We operate in business-to-business market, and we contract through long-term frameworks. Our new strategic actions are disciplined growth, consistent delivery, and cash generation. Our core business units are aligned to our strategic objectives and our core competencies. Our strategy supports our investment proposition set out in slide 14. We plan to create value in the medium term through our business model, our attractive market positions, our strong order book, and execution by our experienced management team.
Firstly, let's talk about the business model. In the model, the Infrastructure Services and Construction businesses generate free cash flow from their long-term, enduring, and sustainable relationships. This cash gets invested in our Property business in a disciplined manner to generate enhanced returns. The Property business leverages its business model of synergies with the operating divisions of the group, and then returns those enhanced cash back returns to the group for investment or return. Building on that previous slide, there are a number of synergies across our business. Firstly, commercial synergies, given we contract through long-term frameworks across the portfolio. Secondly, operational synergies, as we leverage our knowledge and experience in the public sector. Thirdly, project management synergies, as we deliver programmes across business units and market opportunities, as we leverage our combined group capability to win work across our chosen sectors.
Our senior leadership will go into live examples on their stands where we've been successful in doing this. Above that, we have an executive committee of all of our senior leaders who oversee these strategic and synergistic and integrated opportunities and approaches. Kier is a truly and uniquely national contractor. We differentiate ourselves through this regional footprint. We have a national capability, yet execute locally. At any given time, we typically have approximately 500 contracts, predominantly with central government and local authorities. Our business is supported by circa 10,000 employees and 6,000 supply chain partners. Kier matters to the U.K. government and the U.K. economy and the communities in which we operate. Let's just focus now a little bit on the market drivers that underpin our medium-term growth strategy. The U.K. population is expanding. People are living longer.
There's net migration and birth rate spikes. This all puts pressure on already aging social and housing infrastructure. However, while the U.K. economic growth is expected to slow down and the cost of living is rising, the construction industry has historically been used to stimulate the economy. Separately, roads, rail, and airports are becoming more congested with more people and increased travel. Politically, the U.K. government is committed to its Levelling Up agenda, which involves increased spending in the previously deprived parts of the U.K. It's also committed to net zero carbon, which recently further increased in importance given the energy supply and demand issues. Looking into U.K. government spending commitments, and how does this translate into U.K. spending? The MDs will provide focus on this in their sessions on their stands.
In infrastructure, which this slide relates to, the U.K. government has committed to spending GBP 650 billion over 10 years as part of the National Infrastructure Strategy. Initiatives within this include GBP 27 billion investment in roads under the RIS2 programme, GBP 50 billion for water as part of AMP7, GBP 37 billion-GBP 53 billion spend on HS2 2A, 2B, and GBP 138 billion investment in energy infrastructure by 2028. If we look at the equivalent construction spending commitments, accelerated funding into our core sectors has been announced. Within education, there's a 10-year School Rebuilding Programme. Within health, there's a GBP 1.5 billion for hospital maintenance and building, and GBP 3.7 billion for the New Hospital Programme, which is set to be delivered by 2025. In justice, a GBP 4 billion spend over four years with 20,000 new prison places required.
In defence, the GBP 3.2 billion capital expenditure programme. We do anticipate increase and further opportunities through our established positions on all the various frameworks we're party to. We have a significant addressable market opportunity in our core markets. In the year ended 30th of June 2021, our addressable market was estimated at GBP 46 billion, of which approximately GBP 23 billion related to Infrastructure Services and GBP 23 billion for Construction. We have won positions on frameworks worth up to GBP 101 billion based on the Official Journal of the European Union, or OJEU values. These framework positions are typically over a six- to 10-year period. More than 60% of our revenue is derived from projects delivered under frameworks in the last financial year.
We do not include the value of these frameworks in our order book unless we have a probable, or secured contract. The frameworks sit on top of our order book as a pipeline of opportunity. We have an attractive market position across the industry. Within Infrastructure Projects, we deliver complex, high-value infrastructure across nuclear, defence, rail, and water. An example obviously includes HS2, where we're the delivery partner on the longest section of the project. Within Highways, we have a leading market position. We are a top three provider to strategic highways. We've established relationships with clients on long-term frameworks. We have embedded design, construction, and maintenance expertise in strategic as well as local road networks. In Utilities, we're a key contractor on the water and energy sector. We install and maintain connections in water, energy, telecommunications, as well as rail.
The majority of our contracts are delivered under cost-reimbursable contracts. In Construction, we provide project delivery in England, Wales, and Scotland across key sectors, including education, health, justice, and defence. 78% of our projects are for repeat customers. Our Kier Places business includes profitable facilities management contracts and affordable housing maintenance. We have brought the two capabilities together as we pursue a strategy to manage built assets through life with housing associations, local authorities, and central government clients. Our Property business provides mixed property development focused on sustainable urban regeneration for public and private clients. The business leverages public sector relationships across the group to access local authority land banks, and we're well-positioned in our core businesses therefore to win our fair share of work. This chart summarizes our view of our competitive position and market attractiveness of our chosen sectors.
The size of the bubble represents our revenue for the last financial year. We've a strong competitive position across all of our chosen sectors. Not surprising, given it reflects the results of our delivery against those strategic actions set out in the 2019 strategic review to exit the weaker markets. Our focus is firmly on these core sectors as they are supported, as I've said, by long-term procurement frameworks and will benefit from the U.K. government infrastructure spending commitments. Given the market attractiveness of this sector, the bubbles are clustered therefore on the upper right-hand side of the chart. The exceptions to this are Environmental Services and International, where we've wound down the environmental services business and our UAE-based international business is managing its cost base in line with the continued weakness in that market.
This highlights our strong customer relationships we have across the piece with the U.K. government and the regulated sector clients, who together represent 85% of our revenues. We are a strategic supplier to the U.K. government, and the relationships are further enhanced through the local authorities through the regional presence. To my favorite slide. We've got an experienced leadership team focused on delivering the medium-term plan, and I'm very pleased to be joined by them all today. They will introduce themselves individually at their stands when you visit them. I will make one introduction, however, of Amer. Where are you, Amer? Just wave like that. Who is known to many of you, but doesn't actually have a speaking part today. Amer has over 20 years of experience and heads up strategy for us, M&A, and investor relations.
Amer successfully led the sale of our house building business, Kier Living, and also our recent equity raise. To summarize, we believe our medium-term plan is supported by U.K. government spending, both into the future as well as existing spending and projects like HS2. The industry continues to use framework agreements ahead of major spending programmes. The long-term engagement and visibility of these agreements is beneficial for Kier. We've attractive positions in our chosen markets with national capability and yet with a regional footprint, leading to repeat business with public sector bodies. Our progressive approach to ESG plays well to positioning us with all our key clients, Her Majesty's Government and the utility sector, and also in securing roles on those frameworks. The group is supported by a high-quality order book of GBP 8.5 billion, which provides excellent visibility over future revenues.
We have an experienced management team with operational capability to deliver the medium-term plan. With that, I'm very pleased to hand over to Simon, who will now talk to that medium-term plan.
Thank you, Andrew. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Simon Kesterton, the CFO of Kier. I joined the company in 2019, just a short time following Andrew's appointment. Prior to that, I'd been CFO of a number of high-growth businesses, the most recent of which was RPC Group plc. Turning to slide 29, this slide provides a reminder of our medium-term value creation plan, which remains the same as that outlined over a year ago when we presented our half year 2021 results. It provides visibility over the direction of the group. We are targeting revenue of GBP 4 billion-GBP 4.5 billion, driven by the attractive market dynamics Andrew has already outlined, combined with our market-leading positions. You'll hear and see a lot more detail about our markets and our positions within them from the rest of the team today.
Our portfolio of businesses are targeting to generate an adjusted operating margin of circa 3.5%. We target this margin converting to cash at circa 90%. This will lead us to a sustainable net cash position with the capacity to invest and also allowing a sustainable dividend policy of around 3 times through the cycle. Disciplined growth is key, and you'll hear in detail from Stuart Togwell, our Commercial Director, on how we ensure that discipline is maintained across the group.
Combining this discipline with the attractive markets that each of our focus businesses operate in, the strong customer relationships they all maintain, the protections afforded by our positions on key frameworks and increasing barriers to entry driven by our customers' ESG requirements, we can see a clear way to disciplined revenue growth from GBP 3.3 billion in FY 2021 to GBP 4 billion-GBP 4.5 billion in the medium term as we access the material investments already announced by the government in infrastructure. Slide 31 sets out our order book position. Our order book is high quality and has increased by about 6% to GBP 8.5 billion compared to December 31 and over 10% higher than June 2021. We've secured 95% of our FY 2022 revenue as we continue to win work in our chosen markets.
Significant effort has been made to improve the quality of our order book. We've exited low and loss-making contracts, and we are focused on winning work within U.K. government and regulated authorities. We continue to focus on managing risk and reward. Approximately 55% of our order book is under target cost or cost-reimbursable contracts, within Construction, our average project size is circa GBP 12 million. The order book, as Andrew's mentioned, is underpinned by positions on long-term frameworks, which I'll explain in a little more detail on the following two slides. Places on frameworks are key to winning government work, but what is a framework? Frameworks are a contractual umbrella that enable clients to invite tenders or directly award work to preselected suppliers on mostly already agreed preselected terms. The benefits they provide are many.
For example, an efficient tendering process and quick access to quality assured partners for clients. Collabourative R&D and continuous improvement targets are common features that drive best value for money delivery. Suppliers gain access to pipelines of work with a reduced pool of competitors. Increased risk share. They are predominantly quality-based selection rather than lowest price, and therefore the key principles of collabourative frameworks align well to the Construction Playbook objectives. All major public sector work is awarded to those companies who have won places on frameworks. This means frameworks provide long-term revenue streams at acceptable terms to both parties with appropriate risk share and a disciplined market. Working with framework providers consistently, as Kier have done, leads to a strong long-term customer relationship which underpins our order book and future orders.
Just to be clear, as Andrew mentioned earlier, we don't include framework values within our order book number. We only include specific projects for which we have an order or are either 90% sure we'll sign an order. We have places on agreements with an advertised value of up to GBP 101 billion and across all of our core markets, covering both national and regional geographies and market sectors. They typically last 4-8 years, although some highways frameworks can be for as long as 11 years. What are the drivers behind our medium-term margin target? When Andrew and I joined in 2019, we enacted and implemented a significant number of management actions, including divestment of businesses, exiting low and loss-making contracts, significant headcount reductions, and outsourcing. This has driven a significant increase in profitability, which is represented on this slide.
While resolving these issues, we were unable to deploy capital into our Property business, which you will see more of when Lee and Leigh present later. We can now give the team certainty of funding so they can develop opportunities which will further enhance the returns of the group, and within the next 18-24 months, they should be able to consistently deliver 15% return on capital employed. The opportunities in other core markets that we've already talked through should deliver the further disciplined volume growth that completes the bridge to the medium-term value creation plan. Next, a reminder of the income statement for the period ending 31st of December. Revenue was 5% down, and as expected, that reflects the procurement delays that we had previously highlighted.
We delivered adjusted operating profit of GBP 54 million in the first six months of the year, driven by business mix and management actions. The group achieved its medium-term plan margin target of 3.5%, although this was flattered slightly by the mix swing towards our Property business, which had an exceptional first half of the year. The business has made a statutory profit of GBP 10 million after adjusting items, amortization, and tax. We achieved an earnings per share of GBP 0.078 . This compared to GBP 0.104 in the last period. EPS was impacted by the increased number of shares issued as part of the recent capital raise. On a like-for-like basis, this would have been a GBP 0.03 increase.
Net debt of GBP 131 million reflects the traditional seasonal working capital outflow that occurs during the first half of the financial year and further reductions in CapEx. Average month-end net debt was significantly lower than the previous period, reducing to GBP 191 million. Moving to the financing and liquidity, this slide shows the debt structure of the business. As a reminder, our facilities were extended last year and mature in January 2025. You can see the gap between our average month-end net debt and spot net debt is GBP 60 million. Cash generated through achievement of the medium term plan will see average debt heading towards an average month-end net cash position and will allow us to invest further in growth. The free cash flow side is familiar to many of you.
This slide shows the free cash flow generation of the group since the half year 2020. I'm not gonna talk through all the numbers as that's for the results presentations. Key messages to take away from this slide is that absent COVID or any other macro event, activity levels in May and June should be higher compared to the winter months of November and December. This means there will ordinarily be a working capital outflow in the first half of the year and an inflow in the second half of the year in our negative working capital businesses, which is a bulk of our turnover. The one business that differs from this is our Utilities business, which consumes working capital as it grows. Last year was a strong, very strong year with regard to cash flow conversion.
We have repaid the bulk of the GBP 80 million of deferred HMRC, PAYE, National Insurance, and VAT, and we've materially reduced our KEPS utilization. Moving on to capital allocation. We are focused on optimizing shareholder returns. Accordingly, as we generate cash from operations, we expect to deploy that in a number of ways. CapEx is minimal, but we plan to, in a disciplined way, invest more into our capital business, more capital into our Property business, which will allow it to generate consistent annual returns. Further deleveraging, as you're aware, we are targeting a sustainable net cash position in the medium term. We're targeting dividend cover of around three times through the cycle.
With regards to mergers and acquisitions, the group will consider value accretive acquisitions in core markets where there is strategic logic and where there is potential to accelerate the medium-term plan, including achieving a net cash position. Finally, a reminder of our investment proposition, which is an earnings-led model in attractive end markets already underpinned with a strong order book to be delivered by an experienced management team with a proven track record that you're all gonna see later on. Thanks a lot.
Good afternoon. My name is Helen Redfern, and I'm the Chief People Officer at Kier. I've worked in the business for coming up to 10 years. Three years ago, I was appointed as the group HR director, and last year my role was broadened to include health, safety, well-being, and sustainability. Before Kier, my career was in Sainsbury's retail and also in Wolseley, which is now part of the Ferguson Group. I'm delighted to be able to talk to you today about our ESG strategy in Kier, which has to be at the front and centre of everything that we do. There's a lot of ground to cover today, and we're not going to go through all of the information in the pack, as this will be provided to you after.
However, what I really want to highlight as we frame the conversation is there'll be a lot of consistent themes that the managing directors in all of the businesses will cover on their stand. We're a trusted partner to our clients and a strategic supplier to government, and therefore, how we focus on ESG has to be at the heart of everything that we do. We need to secure positions on our frameworks and convert our pipeline of projects into live programs. There's a strong theme in a world of growing complexity around net zero carbon, and we have the skills and capabilities through our people to help our clients and ourselves deliver on the targets that we have set to support and deliver a sustainable, safe, and profitable project and program. We're a responsible business.
We are committed to making a positive impact on the communities that we support and work within. Social value and purpose has always been a very key priority for Kier, and we have clear targets set around areas such as our social value and purpose, diversity and inclusion, employee well-being, supporting our spend through our supply chain, and protecting human rights. We have the best people in Kier with the capabilities and the commitment and passion to deliver for our clients every day. I'm now gonna hand over to Sophie Timms.
Thanks, Helen. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Sophie Timms. I'm Kier's corporate affairs director, and I'm responsible for our engagement with the government as well as internal and external communications. I joined Kier in October 2020, and prior to that, spent 20 years in the financial services sector. It's a bit like coming home to be in the city today to talk to you all. As well as sustainability being a key driver for Kier as a responsible business, it's also a critical obligation for us as a strategic supplier to the U.K. government. To be able to bid for major contracts now means that we have to be ready to respond to the ever-tightening public procurement policy around sustainability.
PPN 06/20 and PPN 06/21 ensure that all government departments and executive agencies are making sure that their bidders can help them deliver on stretching social value and net zero targets. As part of that, we need to publish a carbon reduction plan throughout the life of the contract. The Construction Playbook as well, which is a joint government and industry initiative, also embeds sustainability as a key principle that helps to build a much more progressive and consistent built environment. 300 local authorities have declared climate emergencies and set stretching ambitions to reach net zero, often by 2030. This presents then both an obligation and an opportunity for companies like Kier to help co-create solutions with our public sector clients.
Thank you, Sophie. Last year, we launched our sustainability framework, Building for a Sustainable World. We have 10 pillars which address both social and environmental matters. Our environmental commitments are aligned to the Science Based Targets initiative . As you can see, environmental targets are set around net zero carbon, zero avoidable waste, biosphere protection, reducing water in the long term, and sustainable procurement. Since our baseline of 2018/19, we've reduced our scope one and two carbon emissions by 58% against a target of 38%. Our target for net zero carbon scope one and two is to be achieved by 2039, and each business has a pathway to deliver against this plan.
We're working hard to make ourselves greener using initiatives such as renewable energy, electric vehicles, getting involved early in design to reduce the thickness of slab, which reduces embodied carbon, the use of telematics, and upgrading our premises to include areas such as LED lighting. We also recognize that scope three emissions represent a significant proportion of our overall carbon emissions, and we work closely with our clients and supply chain partners to reduce the impact of those emissions. We continue to work with the Supply Chain Sustainability School on achieving this as well. On zero avoidable waste, we have a target to reduce 10% year on year, and we are within that target. While doing this, we're also developing our zero-waste strategy with the Green Construction Board, and this will help us to achieve our overall target of zero avoidable waste by 2035.
We're working with supply chain to reduce use of packaging, to complete skip audits, to upskill our teams on waste segregation, and use of modern methods of construction. Again, our early involvement in design can ensure that we're reusing materials that are on-site. We're committed to transparency in our ESG disclosures and will produce our first report this year in line with the Task Force on Climate Disclosures. You can see here some examples of how we're working to influence a greener and more sustainable future. One of the projects I'll just pick out as a highlight is our work with Community Wood Recycling, where over the last 10 years we've had a really strong partnership, and we've reduced and recycled and reused wood of 9,170 tons.
This has saved 347 tons of carbon emissions, created seven jobs, and trained people as well. This demonstrates our commitment to joining up across the social and environmental targets that we have. I'm now gonna hand back over to Sophie Timms.
Thanks, Helen. Let's talk a bit about measuring social value. Since the Social Value Act of 2012, measuring social impact outcomes has been a key driver for the public sector. As part of Kier's Building for a Sustainable World framework, we are committed to addressing social issues and creating GBP 5 billion worth of social value spend before 2030. To do this, we're also investing in new tools that help us calculate. Earlier this year, we launched Thrive, which is our new social value calculator, and the main benefit of Thrive is that while clients all use different methodologies and calculations of social value, Thrive can generate that calculation in any format needed.
The tool is currently live on over 1,200 projects, and this year to date, we've already delivered over GBP 570,000 worth of social value. We've taken this a step further and testing another tool, LM3, which maps our local spend in Thrive to areas of social deprivation, as measured by the government's 2019 Indices of Deprivation. This gives a much more granular view of spend and where we can better distribute that, and we've already used it in a number of bids and with clients, and it helps us and them to really deliver strategic social value to the geographies that need it the most. Critical too is our commitment to our extensive supply chain. This includes supporting collabouration and training through the Supply Chain Sustainability School, of which Kier is a founding member.
The school's vision is to deliver world-class collabouration on sustainability within the built environment, and through that, we are providing training and discussion around a number of topics, including waste and carbon, inclusion, and modern slavery. It's also vital that our commitment to prompt payment to our supply chain is honored. We are signatories of the Prompt Payment Code, which means that all of our business streams are accredited and committed to paying 95% of invoices within 60 days. Now I'll hand back to Helen.
Thank you, Sophie. We've been talking about the importance of social value within Kier, and we have our own registered charity, the Kier Foundation. We've donated more than GBP 2.4 million since it's been established over 10 years ago to over 600 causes, and you can see some of those represented on screen now. I'm gonna talk through our people strategy, which is absolutely key to all of our businesses in terms of the strategic priority of attracting and retaining people. We have to have a strong employer brand and proposition offering for all of our people. This has been demonstrated, the improvements that we've made, through our internal engagement measures and also externally through measures such as Glassdoor ratings.
We've worked on a number of initiatives and programmes to really enhance the offering and benefits that we have for our people, and ESG is really at the front and centre of this agenda. For example, you can see on screen here, we've just signed up as part of a consortium with RefuAid to support refugees with language skills and provide employment opportunities. We've also introduced the Real Living Wage and our culture of driving to be diverse and inclusive. We've established our diversity and inclusion roadmap and launched our Expect Respect campaign, which is fully understood across all of the business. Just here, I'll pick out a couple of highlights in other programmes that we use to support people. For example, we work with prison leavers to provide placement and employment support as they leave prison.
We're also a member of the Armed Forces Covenant, where we have our gold award, and these are achievements that we're really proud of in Kier. Another area I want to touch on, which is very core to our offering, is how we develop people. I'm really proud that we have just under 7% of our workforce on apprenticeship programs, and we have a range of development opportunities and programmes that we offer across the business. We see this as a real strategic priority in terms of growing the capabilities of our people and addressing the skills gap in the sector that we have. I want to recap now on the key points and takeaways from this session on ESG today. Firstly, ESG is a strategic priority and enabler for us to win work and secure positions on the frameworks and convert our pipeline into live projects.
Secondly, we have strong capabilities that enable us to work with our clients and support ourselves in achieving our net zero carbon targets, which we've continued to make good progress against. Generating social value is a priority for our business, and we have market leading tools to measure and track our social value spend. Finally, our ability to attract and retain talent is a key priority for us, and we've developed a compelling employee proposition to enhance and develop our own internal capabilities. I'm now going to switch over to a short video on ESG. Thank you.
At Kier, we know our world is changing faster than ever before, and we understand your investment needs to be a responsible one. That's why we're putting ESG at the centre of everything we do. It's a license to operate, similar to health and safety. We're not just ticking boxes, we're leading by example. We're caring for our environment. Since 2014, we've seen a reduction in scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 66%. By leading sustainability on all our projects and working with our clients and supply chain partners to help reach net zero and build a better future. By being accountable, both to TCFD, procurement standards, and our own targets. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but because commitment to the planet and communities makes sound commercial sense. Our sectors, capabilities, and relationships mean we can work together with our clients to co-create solutions.
We're also caring about our communities, looking after our armed forces and those trying to turn their lives around through initiatives like Making Ground and our work with End Youth Homelessness. Supporting the causes our employees care about with our registered charity, the Kier Foundation. We're caring about the future, with 6.8% of Kier employees on formal learning programmes, giving opportunity to the next generation of talent, giving our people time to balance work and home life. Supporting an inclusive workplace with initiatives like Expect Respect. Right across Kier, our people are proud to put ESG at the centre of what we do. Creating responsible outcomes that drive measurable sustainable growth. Kier, ESG by example.
Good afternoon. My name is Liam Cummins. I'm Group Managing Director of Kier Construction, which comprises our Regional Build 4 business units and also Kier Places, our services business. I'm joined this afternoon by Mark Whittaker. Mark Whittaker leads our Kier Places business, and Mark will introduce himself a little bit later on. Just a little bit of an introduction on me to start with. I've been in the construction sector all of my career. I have an operational and a commercial background, and I've spent the last 20 years as an MD at ExCo level, working in both large privately owned businesses and public businesses here in the U.K. down in the Middle East and even further down in Australia. Mark and I have a brief presentation today covering our Regional Build and Places business.
You've all got hard copies of that. What we'd also like to do is bring you inside the real frontline delivery of our business, and we have some technology that we'll show you on live projects out in the field. I'm gonna start with just giving an overview on our Regional Build business. We're a leading national builder. That's very important. Our footprint covers the entire country, and we're delivering today around 277 projects. Of those projects, our average project size is GBP 12 million, and generally, we complete those projects within one year, which is very important characteristic in terms of the risk profile of the business. In terms of our operational footprint, this is what gives us real credibility in our four primary sectors to government.
We've built GBP 5 billion worth of schools over the last 15 years. We've delivered over 100 hospitals to 80 NHS trusts across the U.K. We have a 12-year relationship with the MOJ, and we're currently delivering or in the process of a second stage, GBP 600 million worth of prison work. Recently completed Her Majesty's Prison Five Wells in Wellingborough, which went live operationally earlier this year, and I'll be talking a little more about that later on. We're also a strategic partner to DIO, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, and we're on site at the moment at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, redeveloping the assets there in preparation for the US Air Force bringing their F-35 fighter planes. We've got a really strong, long history of successful operational delivery to our primary sectors in government.
Moving on to how does the policy and the capital pools that Andrew and Simon have referred to earlier on start to translate to real-life project pipelines? For us, as an operating business, what's important is that that capital spend that Andrew's referred to translates to strong, visible pipelines with sensible procurement methods that allow us to underpin our midterm strategy. The good news, the positive news is we see real momentum in that for our business. The School Rebuilding Programme and the Levelling Up agenda that sits inside that is very visible. We can see over 60 schools today in the business that we're able to target through that regional network I described, and that's to both DfE and to local authorities. We have 15 live projects on site today across the U.K.
If we turn to the hospital programme, there's the upgrade needed across hospital estates and NHS trusts, which our regional businesses very much sit inside and target. There is the New Hospital Programme, the GBP 3.7 billion programme that's been launched by government for more major projects inside that space. We have 29 active projects today across the U.K. in the healthcare sector. You may have seen recently we just started on site at Luton and Dunstable University Hospital, which is a GBP 93 million new acute services ward as part of the Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Turning to prisons, as Andrew said earlier, there is a huge demand for prison spaces. 18,000 is the declared number from government.
We've been awarded a place on a prison alliance by the Ministry of Justice, one of four partners to deliver a four a GBP 1 billion programme of new prison work, and that'll be four prisons, and that will be during the lifetime of our mid-term strategy. With regards to defence, there's the GBP 3.2 billion Defence Estate Optimisation programme, the DEO, as it's referred to as an acronym, and we're seeing the pipeline of projects coming through for that, and that's a 25-year horizon of investment in defence estates across the U.K. Finally, turning to the commercial sector, we are seeing demand from high-quality blue-chip clients for zero-carbon commercial buildings in London and some of the other major cities in the U.K. We're currently working with Stanhope, with Argent, with the Crown Estate, delivering those types of projects, and that's very much part of our strategy.
I guess we're seeing the rubber is hitting the road from the policy commitments and the capital pools into real life projects that support our midterm plan. If we move now to our overall market positioning, and what I'd like to do with this is just concentrate on three aspects of our operating model, which I feel really differentiate us, out there in the market. First of all, we face our primary sectors with an expert markets and clients team. We have individuals who are familiar with those government departments that I've talked about earlier on, can look at a 10-year horizon of where those departments are going and can position Kier in the context of that.
We also have great teams that can develop and bid frameworks and manage those relationships then over the long term. The second facet is that we deliver through these fantastic regional delivery units. I call them regional ecosystems. They've got great leadership teams, proud to live and work in the areas that they operate, with strong relationships with clients, with strong relationships with our SME supply chains that very much support those businesses, and very proud to be able to drive social value and make a difference to the local community. That second facet is the real anchor that we deliver the business on. Finally, the third aspect is that, as Andrew and Simon have highlighted earlier, our future pipeline is underpinned by long-term frameworks. We've got great visibility of that work.
We've got a great track record of having delivered that work over many, many years. It also means that 72% of our work is actually delivered for repeat clients with all the benefits that come of that in terms of learning fast and taking that into being safer, being more productive in how we deliver our programmes going forward. Finally, in your pack, you will see 4 project examples of projects that are live today across the primary sectors that I've just run through that really evidence our capability. I'll let you read the detail of those, but I want to highlight 3 common threads across all of those projects that really come out at you.
First of all, each one of them is secured through long-term framework-led relationships, which, as we've said, is the absolute bedrock of the visibility of future pipeline that we can see. The second point is that our capability in supporting our customers' zero carbon agendas is very clear on all four of those projects and very important for us to be able to participate in that pipeline of projects going forward. Finally, in all of those projects, we're deploying design for manufacture and assembly. We're leveraging our design capability, our digital capability, and our supply chain with off-site manufacturers, and we're taking the opportunity to take projects that would normally be constructed on site into a factory environment and assembling them in the field in a completely different way.
All of those have great evidence of that, as a business. Thank you very much. I'm now gonna hand over to Mark, who will talk you through our Kier Places business.
Thanks, Liam. My name is Mark Whittaker. I am the Managing Director of Kier Places. I've been at Kier for 10 years, where I've held senior operational leadership roles in both our housing maintenance and our facilities management businesses. Just over a year ago, in March 2021, we brought together our housing maintenance and our facilities management operations under a single business entity, Kier Places. This was done after a period of consolidation where we exited our non-core commercial maintenance activities, reshaped the business to capitalize on some of the obvious operational and commercial efficiencies that existed. Both our housing maintenance and facilities management businesses work across a broad range of local and central government clients. Within our facilities management business, specifically, the blue light, the education, and the health sectors.
Our operating model has a national footprint and provides a variety of reactive and planned maintenance, technical hard FM compliance, building safety, passive and active, compliance measures, predominantly in the places that people work and the places that people live. Moving on to the next slide. The Places business model is different to that of construction. The Places business operates on a national footprint and specializes in the live environment, which in this context means the places that people live. We interact directly with the public during the course of operational delivery. However, the customer core base is strategically aligned, and the business is now enabled to operate on a larger platform with a broader set of capabilities and wider reach into our core markets.
Kier Places are an early adopter of the Building a Safer Future Charter, which is a voluntary charter, sponsored and endorsed by the MHCLG. This gives Kier Places the credibility to grow and develop a market-leading building safety opportunity. In addition to this, the business is well strategically linked to be able to adapt and capitalize on emerging opportunities such as the retrofit and decarbonization agenda. As with Liam, I am conscious that the case studies that we'll be referring to within our pack are there, and they're available for you to read at your own leisure. However, there are a few points that I would like to extract. Firstly, Kier Places is an annuity-type business.
The case studies reference to contracts that are 15 years and 6 years in length, and this is consistent with the procurement of maintenance contracts within the local government and central government arena. In addition to this, these contracts are specifically designed to deal with medium-term market fluctuations, and as such, have indexation clauses that protect our business from inflation. Finally, the projects that we deliver through these contracts are generally a low value and have a pre-construction and construction period of less than a year. Thank you.
Hello, I'm Stuart Togwell, Group Commercial Director. I have functional responsibility for commercial, risk, legal, and procurement. I've been in industry for 36 years, and I joined Kier 3 years ago. My skill is in growing profitable, sustainable construction businesses. The slide before you sets out how Kier manages its risk through the use of its operating and risk management frameworks. It was introduced 3 years ago as part of our overhaul of the strategic review. It's constantly used across the group to help drive discipline on how we bid, win, and deliver projects and services to our customers within our chosen sectors. It's embedded in the business, and it's how we manage risk, including, of course, increased costs and availability of labour and materials.
Although we face uncertain times, we have faced into these risks for quite a while now, and we manage increased costs through being selective on the work that we bid, sticking to our knitting, and negotiating appropriate terms and risk share with our clients. You'll see through the presentations of the group how we've limited our exposure further through the construction business having average projects of only GBP 12 million, which are delivered within a year. Excluding this risk or using indices to value them on our longer and larger infrastructure contracts. We have been relentlessly building trust with our supply chain partners since COVID, which has allowed us to have excellent market intelligence over the cost and lead-in times of materials and labour, which means we can, through early involvement with our clients, provide appropriate advice to help them effectively deliver their projects.
I'm now going to pass you over to Mark, who's gonna bring what I've said to life through his introduction to the infrastructure business. Thank you.
Thank you, Stuart. Good afternoon. I'm Mark Pengelly, and I'm the Managing Director for our infrastructure business, part of the infrastructure business stream. I'm a chartered civil engineer, and I joined Kier back in 1984 as a sponsored undergraduate. I've been with the group 38 years, and I pretty much worked in every part of the group and across all of the market sectors. I've been a director, with operational and delivery responsibility for the past 18 years. In Kier Infrastructure, we deliver highly complex, high-value civil engineering projects, and we have a real credibility in this area. We've delivered some of the largest projects in the U.K. in the last decade. We drove the twin- bore tunnels on Crossrail from Paddington to Farringdon.
We constructed the Farringdon Box, which is 40 meters deep and is effectively the same as constructing a 12-storey building below ground. We fitted out the station and handed over to London Underground, and we were the first contractor to do so on the entire Crossrail line. We've also been at Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. We've been there since 2011, and at the peak, we delivered 4.5 million cubic meters of earthworks. Currently, we are involved on HS2 as part of the EKFB joint venture. We're delivering the longest section, 80 km, from the Chilterns to just south of Warwick. We're well respected in the industry and with regards to our core values and our engineering excellence.
Regardless of whether we are actually leading projects on our own as a single entity or whether we're part of a bigger joint venture, we always put the project leads in, we lead on the project management, and we lead as a programme integrator. We work in highly regulated environments. We work in rail, we work in nuclear, and as such, quality management is at the forefront of everything that we do. With regards to design management, we have a number of strategic external relationships, but I think more importantly, we have an in-house capability, which adds real value and helps us enhance the offering that we give our clients. As Stuart has amply demonstrated already, all of this is underpinned by very robust risk management and commercial procedures. Currently, the infrastructure sector is benefiting from continued investment by the government.
Andrew, in his presentation earlier, has already talked about an expenditure profile of GBP 650 billion over the next 10 years. With the construction press and the information that we now get through the National Infrastructure Pipeline, through the Energy White Paper, and through Build Back Better, we have far greater visibility of the phasing and timing of this pipeline. Right here, right now, we're very focused on four particular market sectors. Within rail, we're benefiting from the investment within HS2. We're already involved on HS2, as I mentioned earlier. HS2, phases 2A and 2B, are estimated to be somewhere between GBP 37 billion-GBP 53 billion. We've already been awarded the early works contract on phase 2A as a sole entity, as just Kier. In addition, we have Network Rail.
Network Rail is the biggest asset owner in the U.K., with an asset base even greater than National Highways. In the last control periods, control period six, Network Rail had a spend profile of GBP 50 billion. Within the nuclear sector, the government has committed to GBP 20 billion of funding for new nuclear. Within the Energy White Paper, they've committed to one more nuclear power station this term. We're very well-positioned, having been down at Hinkley since 2011, and we're also working up at Sellafield for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Within the water sector, we're currently working with Thames Water, Anglian Water, and South West Water. Across their control period, which is AMP7, they've had a spend profile of GBP 51 billion.
We're also the sole provider of the framework for the Canal & River Trust, which is a national framework, and for the Environment Agency down in the southwest. Both of these frameworks have been going for in excess of 15 years. Finally, the defence sector. Back in 2021, the spend profile was GBP 42 billion, and this is a very strong market for Kier. We've been down at the Devonport Royal Dockyard since 1972, and we're currently carrying out works on 12 Dock, 14 Dock, and we're in the tender process for a GBP 300 million framework to refit 10 Dock to take the Astute class of submarines that are coming in in 2025 for a refit and a refuel.
We very much changed the way that we transact as Kier Infrastructure over the last four years. We've become far more customer-focused and have a far more key account management approach to our clients. Very specifically, we look for two types of clients. Firstly, we look for clients that have a large asset base or a large portfolio of projects, such as the water companies and Network Rail. Secondly, we look for clients that have major programmes of work to deliver and are looking for a strategic partner with implementation skills, such as Crossrail and HS2. We do this for a very good reason. These clients are looking for strategic partners. They're looking for long-term relationships, repeat business again and again and again. They have a far more mature approach to risk management, risk mitigation, and risk sharing.
We effectively come to market through three particular routes. We come to market as a sole entity, as Kier Infrastructure, as we have done on the A13, which is a GBP 100 million road widening scheme for Thurrock, or for the recent GBP 60 million award that we've just had from Network Rail on the Oxford redevelopment. We also come to market on very large schemes through external joint ventures, and we do this in two ways. We do it with well-established contractors that we have a long-term relationship with, such as BAM Nuttall, where we do this through the new nuclear environment, and we've been working there for 20 years.
We also do it where we think a particular contractor can bring additional capabilities, and add to our value offering to our clients, just as we did with Eiffage on HS2, where Eiffage brought their European high-speed experience to align with our project management and programme integrator skills. We do this for a very good reason. We do it to balance the resourcing and revenue profile risk that always goes with very large infrastructure projects. Thirdly, we come to market by leveraging the existing relationships that exist within the bigger Kier Group. By bringing our major projects capability and our engineering excellence, we can support our Kier colleagues in Highways and Utilities to bring to their clients on their existing frameworks a broader range of services and offerings. In return, this opens the door to higher value capital projects.
A very good example of that would be Lower Thames Crossing. This new road scheme is the biggest road scheme to be delivered in the U.K. since the M25 was constructed back in 1985. GBP 1.5 billion. Kier Highways already has a strategic relationship with National Highways as one of their top three service providers. By aligning our major project capability to that strategic relationship enables Kier to give the client a far greater offering. We do exactly the same in Utilities. What we're doing is we're leveraging Kier Utilities relationships with Thames Water, with Anglian Water, and with South West Water. We've already won and been awarded a GBP 40 million pipeline in Oxford, Farringdon.
We've also been awarded the Mogden Sewage Treatment Works at GBP 70 million, and the early works contract on the GBP 70 million water treatment works at Alderney. By leveraging these existing relationships in this manner, Kier Infrastructure has identified an additional GBP 4 billion worth of pipeline opportunities that we can go for. I'll finish the presentation as I started it. All of this is underpinned by very robust risk management and commercial processes. Thank you very much.
First let me start by telling you what the highways business does. Highways matters. The highways asset in the U.K. is worth about GBP 500 billion, making it one of the most valuable assets to the nation. About 80% of all journeys are made on U.K.'s roads, and about 90% of the freight moves on U.K.'s roads. We in Kier Highways maintain about 27,000 km of roads. Maintaining means doing things like cutting the grass, keeping the roads free of ice and snow, clearing potholes. We also carry out a whole range of improvement, enhancements, and upgrades to the highway networks that we work upon. One of the things that sets us apart in highways is that we employ over 500 designers.
Those 500 designers came across as part of the acquisition of Mouchel, and we're very happy that we retained that capability in the business, and it remains in the business today. That enables us to offer an end-to-end solution where we design, build, and maintain roads across the U.K. for both National Highways and a whole range of local authorities. We're an integrator, which means that we bring supply chain partners, clients, and our capability together to deliver infrastructure for the U.K. In terms of market opportunities, looking at National Highways first, the U.K. has a plan to invest GBP 650 billion over 10 years, and in roads, that manifests itself as the Road Investment Strategy.
Road Investment Strategy 2, which runs from 2020 to 2025, has got GBP 27 billion of funding secured. Kier is well positioned to deliver our capability and services as part of delivering that Road Investment Strategy for National Highways. Looking at local highways, the local highways market is about one and a half times the size of National Highways, but it's much more fragmented than the National Highways marketplace. Kier has positions on a number of frameworks across local highways and a number of contracts in local highways where we can deliver our design, build, and maintain services.
Project Speed has been quite an interesting development over the last few years, where we're trying to build faster, leaner and greener for the nation, and we're very proud to be one of the partners delivering the A66 up in the northwest of England. As part of the A66 build under Project Speed, we're halving the construction time from 10 years down to 5 years. Clearly climate change is featuring large in the way we deliver our services to our clients, and there's a great example in the notes that you'll be able to refer to, which shows on one of our schemes in the Midlands how we reduced carbon emissions by some 25%. That's becoming a recurring theme really on all the works that we do across the business.
In terms of market approach, the key thing to bring out here is that the business has been through quite a significant transition where we've successfully moved from being a highway maintenance provider into being a major projects delivery partner. That's alongside being a highway maintenance provider. We've got a range of major projects which are listed down the right-hand side of this slide, and those are primarily for National Highways. Because of that design, build and maintain capability and that integrator scale, it positioned us very strongly to be able to move into that area, and it allowed us to leverage the wider capability that exists in the Kier Group.
From a highway maintenance perspective, we have the ability to leverage our footprint, and you'll see in a later slide, we've got over 70 depots and offices across the country where we can position our capability to go and deliver services to our local authority and National Highways clients. In summary, from a market positioning perspective, we are the leading provider of highway services in the country. We are an integrator where we can bring together that unique blend of design, build, and maintenance expertise to deliver sustainable infrastructure for our clients. We've got long-term collabourative relationships that are established both with our clients and with our supply chain partners. We've got a marketplace where the asset itself, the GBP 500 billion asset of the U.K.'s roads, drives demand and a need for the services that Kier provides.
We feel very strongly positioned as Kier Highways to continue to furnish that market with our skills and capability. Thank you.
Hi, I'm Andrew Bradshaw, the Group Managing Director for the Utilities business. I have 35 years civil engineering experience in commercial and operational roles, and for the last 8 years, I've been with Kier, where prior to joining Utilities, I worked with Joe in the Highways business. In my short time in Utilities, it's quite clear that the group businesses of Utilities, Highways, and Infrastructure all have a market-leading proposition to deliver. The slides are in the handouts, and I won't talk you through all the detail on the slides, but what I want to show you today is how we take rainwater from the sky, power from source, and deliver it into millions of homes across the U.K. today. That's just a small snapshot of our 24/7 delivery service. That enables 18 million homes access to clean water and connects and maintains electricity to 10 million homes.
We deliver an end-to-end solution: design, build, and maintain, so that when you fill that kettle or you switch on that TV, the myriad of mechanical and electrical components, pipes, stop valves, and breakers all remain 100% functional. In telecoms, we're delivering 5,000 new homes a month as part of the U.K.'s super fast broadband, and every four minutes we undertake a maintenance activity to the 23,000 telephone masts that are part of the 5G rollout. Utilities is at the heart of the National Infrastructure Strategy. With solid funding coming from government and private investment. GBP 50 billion is invested in the water sector over a five-year period. GBP 32 billion pounds is invested into the super fast broadband rollout until 2027, and there's a further GBP 40 billion pounds that's invested in the energy market that connects new and existing infrastructures.
Beyond this, the government funding extends into the GBP 5 billion investment into the Levelling Up agenda to deliver telecoms into rural areas. There's the U.K.'s decarbonization strategy, where Utilities have newly formed our decarbonized solutions offer that gives us access to EV charging, hydrogen installations, and off-grid capacity through the energy clients. From this secured investment, it allows us to invest in our skills and our people and the supply chain that's required to deliver today, tomorrow, and deliver the medium-term plan. Our key market position from a local and national presence is built up off a culture of trust and collabouration. It's not just with our clients, it's with our peers, where alliance of working brings the industry together to deliver a truly focused delivery shared on successes, knowledge, and innovation.
In the frameworks, outperforming peers with high-performing teams provides us with greater shares. With the long-standing relationships we have with our clients, it moves us into wider capital markets, utilizing the strength of the group in Highways and Utilities and infrastructure. In infrastructure, we have partnered to deliver an early order for South West Water for the GBP 75 billion water treatment works at Alderney, near Bournemouth. All of this positions us well to maximize our current builds, and gives us a solid foundation into the growth markets around telecoms, EV charging, and hydrogen. We have a national footprint, where over our 15 clients, we have 43 local delivery teams that supports the medium-term objectives as an integrator and as an intelligent supplier.
As an example, in the southwest, we deliver 212,000 task orders per year for the South West Water client to make sure that the water flows through into our homes across the southwest area. In the slide deck, there are example projects for South West Water, Firmus Energy, and CityFibre for you to look at. Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Leigh Thomas. I'm the Group Managing Director for Kier Property. I'm a chartered surveyor. I've been doing property development and acquisitions for more than 30 years. I've been with Kier for 17 years now, and I've been the current managing director for 7 years. I'll be taking you through the Kier Property strategy, and the key macroeconomic drivers of the business. In a minute, I'll introduce Lee Howard, who's our finance director. He'll be taking you through the group synergies, and the public sector relationships. Our strategy across our core sectors really relate to three main areas. Climate change, population growth, and changing consumer trends. There's been a real change in legislation around climate change.
The new government white paper coming through next year will actually mean that by 2030, nearly 80% of commercial property may be obsolete as they don't reach the minimum EPC standards of Class B. We also have corporate pressures around ESG and well-being and the drive for net zero carbon. All of these are great opportunities for the business. We have significant population growth, and in particular, huge urban population growth. In the last 40 years, our cities have got 12 million people bigger, and actually that's a great opportunity for urban regeneration. We've got huge demand in terms of the supply of residential, so we're not keeping up with delivering the amount of homes that people need. Actually, on top of that, we've got big demand for build-to-rent properties and an increase in single households, all of which is driving the demand for residential.
Lastly, we have a change in consumer trends. Before COVID, we actually did 19% retail shopping online. Post-COVID, that's 26%. These huge changes in consumer behaviors are driving a large demand shift for last-mile logistics and industrial properties. We also have things like global supply shortages and global supply crises, which is driving the need for reshoring, onshoring, data centres, and actually automation and AI. All of this is driving demand for industrial, and the vacancy rates for industrial at an all-time low of 3%. How do property respond to this? Well, we're a commercial and urban residential property developer. We've structured the business around three core areas, urban-led mixed-use residential, sustainable offices in core U.K. regional cities, and industrial and last-mile logistics.
The capital allocations across these three asset classes are broadly balanced, and actually the aim is to grow the property portfolio and investment up to GBP 170 million capital. The Property business, through joint ventures, has access to GBP 1.7 billion gross development value pipeline. Actually, JVs are core to what we do, and we have a 70-strong in-house team which is multidisciplined, which is really what our joint venture partners really value the business for, that expertise in helping deliver urban regeneration. By delivering things through joint venture, it helps us manage risk and delivers increasingly steady fee income. The property mix between public and private joint ventures is currently 60/40 in favor of public sector, which delivers really strong synergies to the rest of the group.
You see in front of you here a slide that shows the five steps of our value creation model. Once you control land, which is the first step, which our access to GBP 1.7 billion of value pipeline demonstrates we have, you use the in-house experience and the multidisciplined team that we've got to deliver planning permission, and then use the relationships that have been long established to secure the occupiers. Once you secure planning and occupiers, actually those create most of the value in this value chain. We can then forward-fund the opportunity and use other people's capital to actually deliver the scheme, therefore driving very high IRRs. Within the build and the sell phase, you know, we have the opportunity to leverage up some really strong build experience within the rest of the group to help us mitigate risk.
On the sell stage, understanding your market and understanding what your customers want to buy helps us deliver product that is highly sustainable and is in high demand, therefore driving the best price. I'll now hand you over to Lee Howard to talk you through the JV public sector model.
Thank you, Leigh. I'd now like to spend a few moments to take you through our public sector JV model and how we mitigate risk. Firstly, the model on the left-hand side is the traditional approach to development, where land is acquired first before planning is secured, construction tendered, with the full risk of market movement borne by the developer. As Leigh has said, 60% of our development pipeline is secured through long-term public sector joint ventures. The public sector JVs are procured on a fixed price margin for the developer, with the land price being the adjusting factor up until the point of land drawdown. The public JV model allows land to be contractually secured, but crucially, the price is only set after the project is significantly de-risked and several conditions have been met. These conditions include planning, funding, and construction costs.
At this point, the land price is set and the development phase may commence. This insulates and protects the fixed margin and market conditions as inflation with land reducing if the costs increase. The JV shares the upside if the project outperforms, whereas the downside risk is borne by the land price up until that point of drawdown. This structure not only insulates the projects for margin protection, but also allows a much more capital-efficient structure, with land acquired further on in the development process. This model is particularly required for our long-term, multi-phase projects, where land is drawn down over a number of years and phases. I'd now like to take you through some of the key group synergies that property enjoys with the remainder of group. Property enjoys many synergies with the other group divisions, providing a wealth of opportunity.
Leigh has articulated the core property sectors of office, industrial, and urban residential, and these sectors cross over with the target sectors of other divisions where strong relationships already exist. Many of these relationships are government departments and local authorities who in their own right are significant landowners with vast portfolios. Through these existing relationships, we are able to understand the strategic aims of the clients and assist them to unlock value within their estates. By leveraging our existing established group relationship, we have access to a huge opportunity to provide additional services to clients where we are already a key trusted partner. As well as these upstream synergies, there are also many downstream synergies with Kier Construction able to tender for further work within these joint ventures on a fixed basis. Okay.
I'd now like to take you through some of the key partnerships that Kier Property already have in existence. We have a number of existing public sector joint ventures across our core South East and regional city target market, including Liverpool, Birmingham, Watford, and our South East-focused JV with Network Rail. These JVs are all long-term in nature, ranging from 10 to 20 years, and provide a strong pipeline of opportunity with contractual access to land on fixed margins. The JVs are procured through a bid and scoring process where the scoring matrix includes not just the financial return to the authority, but also their track record, partner fit, ESG credentials, ability to flex to the client needs, and deliverability, are all key parts of the scoring process, which sets Kier aside from many of its peers. I'll now pass you over to Leigh.
Thank you, Lee. Just like to talk you through the market opportunity. You've heard from other group managing directors about the huge opportunity in terms of the government Levelling Up program, and investment, in the U.K. infrastructure. There's GBP 650 billion of committed investment across the U.K. By working together with the other managing directors of Kier, we can understand where this investment is being targeted, and as a property development business, really try and actually leverage up the best places to actually invest your capital before you see the values go up. A great opportunity of sharing intellectual property and information to drive returns. The urban regeneration issue, you know, what are we doing with the high streets?
Local authorities are really struggling with actually regenerating the high street, generating revenues through council tax and business rates. Actually, by helping them do that and increasing the revenue streams, we are delivering housing, employment, but also helping the local government agenda. Lastly, we mentioned at the top of the presentation, there's a huge supply shortage of homes. Most local authorities are struggling to deliver a five-year housing land supply. In fact, a third of them are actually failing on this measure. There'll be a huge push in terms of delivering urban houses, in terms of catering for that macroeconomic supply issue we talked about earlier. Lastly, we talk about the Levelling Up agenda. Devolution, city mayors, combined authorities are all really pushing the agenda around the regions.
A good example of this is the government property advisories hub programme. Kier Property, we delivered a pre-let 240,000 sq ft office building in Arena Central to HMRC two years ago, which is a great example of using the contacts around the group and the public sector relationships to find the occupiers and deliver de-risked property development. Our market positioning. We have access to a very large land bank worth GBP 1.7 billion gross development value, and 60% of this is with the public sector joint ventures, which, as Lee described, is largely insulated to inflation. These joint ventures help us manage risk and generate fees as well as profit.
We have a really experienced multidisciplinary in-house team, which actually delivers a fantastic track record across all these sectors and which is why our joint venture partners look to do business with us. The strong group synergies allow us to invest capital wisely, knowing where government investment is being targeted, but also leverage up the great relationships around local and central government to deliver more for our clients. Also great opportunities for the businesses to work together on an arm's length basis to help actually improve revenue streams within the group. The aim really is to actually deliver stable investment in the property business, allow that capital to season, which will ultimately produce a 15% consistent ROCE return in the medium term. Thank you.