Our commitment

The Westminster Property Association (WPA) is committed to ensuring that the built environment sector better reflects Westminster’s diverse communities. We are dedicated to promoting diversity, equality and inclusion within our own work and making best use of our platform to inform and inspire our members, so that together we can make our sector more inclusive and representative.

Our sector plays a crucial role in shaping the future of London, and our decisionmakers should better reflect the wider population which work, live and enjoy Central London’s built environment.

Across our Board and committees, we promote a culture of inclusion where no form of intimidation or bullying will be tolerated and that people of all ages, race, gender, religion, disability or sexual orientation are welcomed and treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to improving the collection and understanding our own data to improve diversity across our Board and committees.

We welcome the positive changes being made by many of our members, but recognise the need to continue to build on this progress. To help us advance diversity, equality and inclusion within our sector and support greater engagement with Westminster’s diverse communities of residents, workers and visitors, we commit to:

• Engage with Westminster City Council and young people through Westminster community groups, schools, colleges, training providers, youth charities and other channels to foster interest in our industry and encourage young people to engage with planning and development.

• Work with partner bodies, such as BAME in Property, Freehold and Real Estate Balance, to encourage our members to sign up to charters and use resources to improve diversity, equality and inclusion within their own organisations.

• Champion diverse voices in our events and research programmes, as well as in our decision-making and advisory structures, from Board level to NextGen.

As an organisation, we have made the decision to sign up to the diversity charters, and support the diversity organisations, listed below as a means of showing our commitment in this area.

We encourage our members to do the same.

Charters & resources

The WPA is proud to be a supporter of a number of specialist organisations that work for a more inclusive industry, including:

• BAME in Property 
• Freehold
• Future of London’s Speaker Diversity Pledge
• Real Estate Balance

We would also encourage our members to consider diversity charters and commitments relevant to your organisation. A toolkit of those available is available here.

Career opportunities

To encourage greater access to property career opportunities, we have collated some of the many internships, work experience and graduate programmes offered by WPA member organisations – view the list here.

Diverse recruitment

Employers should consider using recruiters and recruitment platforms which promote opportunities to a diverse group of candidates, such as Building People.

Engaging with Westminster’s Young People

Organisations such as the Young Westminster Foundation and 2-3 Degrees organise and host fantastic, engaging programmes for Westminster’s young people. Find out about the property career events WPA has hosted in partnership with these organisations here.