THE UNITE GROUP PLC Annual Report and Accounts 2024 58 STRATEGIC REPORT STRATEGIC REPORT RISK MANAGEMENT continued PRINCIPAL RISK Operational risk 4 Objective: Minimise the risk of an incident that could impact the safety of our customers, contractors and employees Risk: Major health and safety (H&S) incident in a property or a development site Events that may trigger the risk • Catastrophic fire, flood or other incident at a property. • Incident at construction site involving Unite Students’ employees or third-party contractors. Potential impact • Fatality or serious injury. • Reputational damage and loss of trust in Unite Students as a reliable partner. • Disruption to occupation of buildings. How we monitor and mitigate • Business continuity plans. • Board-supervised Health & Safety Committee in place. • Highly skilled and experienced H&S team in place. • Operational Performance Team focus on H&S. • Expert external assurance on development safety risk. • Visible leadership for Safety & Wellbeing driven by our senior leaders. • Use of audits and external consultants. • Cladding programme to remediate facades, where appropriate. Events that may trigger the risk • Challenging planning environment, including increased regulation in construction design. • Land scarcity and increased competition for the best sites. • Further increases in borrowing costs. Potential impact • Abortive costs where schemes are not delivered. • Inability to deliver targeted earnings growth and total accounting return. How we monitor and mitigate • Defined limits for abortive costs on each project and contracts structured as subject to planning or options to ensure downside protection. • Consult and lobby at a national and local level to promote the benefits of student accommodation. • Comprehensive due diligence is completed on sites prior to purchase, including seeking a pre-application assessment from the relevant local authority. • Clear planning and stakeholder consultation programme. • Using mixed use sites strategically to gain positive outcomes. PRINCIPAL RISK Property risk 5 Objective: Deliver a suitable development pipeline Risk: Inability to secure the best sites on the right terms, at a suitable level of return on investment Increased Decreased Risk key No change Reason for the change in risk profile: When benchmarking RIDDOR incidents there is a very low rate of occurrence. The Health and Safety team has been strengthened, increasing the performance within the second line of defence. Our main contractors understand our ways of working and safety focus.