The People Leader role is critical to the success of our business and the People Leader relationship is integral to the development and progression of our people. This year we focussed on ensuring a consistent understanding of the expectations and importance of the role.

For example, we launched our Tax & Legal ‘People Leader Toolkit’ to effectively support our People Leaders in their role, a one stop shop, including valuable resources, training materials and key talent cycle timelines.

Listening to our people and ensuring that they feel heard continues to be a key priority. In FY25 we began our ‘People and Purpose’ roadshows, providing an opportunity for our people to share their thoughts and ask questions to our People and Purpose Partner, Harvey Smith and our HR Business Partners. These will continue into FY26.

We continued to listen to our people via our Engage for Change survey. Over 3,200 employees responded to our latest survey which essential for us to be able to act on the things that matter most to them.

For example, in response, we launched our Tax and Legal approach to wellbeing, which focusses on 3 key areas to support thriving teams: personal proactivity, collective responsibility as teams and leadership accountability. We invested in support for our people with their wellbeing, including a ‘Digital habits for better wellbeing’ session, led by Mind over Tech and a session on ‘Reaching out for help at work’, led by Thriving.

We are committed to ensuring that we continually strive to provide an inclusive workplace and equity of opportunity for everyone in Tax and Legal. Some of the activity undertaken this year includes:

• Each Tax and Legal Partner was requested to commit to at least one inclusion goal, which will also form part of their end of year discussion.
• The launch of the Ethnicity Action Group (EAG), which is specifically focused on moving the dial on equity of opportunity for Ethnic Minority colleagues within Tax and Legal and is supported by allied partners, including Tax and Legal Exec Team members.
• 90 of our Partners joined Caroline Flanagan, author and keynote speaker, for a workshop on ‘Building an inclusive culture’.
• Targeted individual development actions to ensure we embrace a culture of continuous improvement on D&I.
• A specific focus on all 12 inclusion networks, led by Philippa Castell, People and Purpose lead, involving a systematic stress test to ensure Tax and Legal is fully supporting each inclusion network and that each of these networks supports our people.

We continue to work closely with the tax charities, TaxAid and Tax Help for Older People, and relaunched our corporate volunteering programme in July 2024. Through their work with the charities, our volunteers provide up to three-and-a-half hours of their time a month to support vulnerable, low-income taxpayers who need help with their tax problems but cannot afford to pay for professional advice. In FY25 over 30 Deloitte volunteers helped around 90 individuals with their tax problems.

For many of those supported by the tax charities, their tax problems are caused or exacerbated by other issues in their lives such as bereavement, mental or physical ill-health, job loss or business failure, language barriers or educational needs. With personal allowances frozen until April 2028, more people on low incomes will be brought into the tax system each year as HMRC forecasts the number of income tax payers to rise from 34.5 million in 2022-23 to 39.1 million in 2025-26. Often tax problems seem insurmountable but can be resolved easily with professional help. As well as reducing financial hardship (our volunteers achieved over £120,000 of cancelled tax demands and late filing penalties in FY25), the support provided to the beneficiaries removes a weight from their shoulders and allows them to focus their time and energy on other areas of their life.

Our support extends beyond volunteering and, in FY25, we made a financial donation of £50,000 and continued to provide a part-time secondee and technical support on the Salesforce case management system.

During FY25, we also carried out a pro-bono beneficiary assessment project to help the charities better understand the needs of current and potential beneficiaries, as well as the needs of voluntary and community sector organisations who provide a referral pathway for beneficiaries. This work helped inform a strategic review carried out by the trustees of the two charities and on 1 July 2025 TaxAid and Tax Help for Older People merged to further develop the services needed to help people of all ages in the future.

"TaxAid is a small charity, but our purpose is to make a big impact on people who are otherwise unable to access the help they need with a tax problem and in 2024/25 we changed the lives of over 18,000 people. The collaborative nature of the identification and delivery of the support we receive from Deloitte as well as its breadth, ensures that the impact of Deloitte's resources on the lives of our beneficiaries is maximised. All projects undertaken, from the routine volunteering work undertaken by junior consultants, to the specialist skills of the Salesforce team or consulting team to the senior advisory support are all delivered with immense professionalism ensuring that Deloitte's impact is not limited to the direct support of our beneficiaries, but extends to our staff teams, providing us with the opportunity to increase our self-sufficiency and creating resilience against future challenges."

- Valerie Boggs, CEO at TaxAid

Given the increases in both the minimum wage and number of minimum wage jobs, alongside the complex rules previously introduced, many employers continue to inadvertently pay people incorrectly. This is despite the fact that there are now more minimum wage jobs in very large firms than micro firms.

During FY25, our Fair pay team have continued to advise clients on national minimum wage and holiday pay compliance. In FY25, we reviewed over 838,000 employees’ national minimum wage or holiday underpayments.

The team have also supported a number of clients, who collectively have over 150,000 employees, to comply with the EU Pay Transparency Directive, ensuring employers are transparent regarding pay structures and can accurately measure and report on the gender pay gap and ensure pay equity across Europe. 

Pro Bono

Project Greenery, is a collaborative, pro bono initiative jointly funded by Deloitte and Beamery, each contributing £100,000. Deloitte and Beamery, are working with Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB) to address the significant skills shortage required to deliver net zero ambitions by supporting ‘Green Horizons’, a platform scaling programme that seeks to reskill and relocate ~10,000 displaced individuals by 2030.

The project's core objectives are twofold: to develop a proof-of-concept for a technologically advanced platform capable of efficiently matching skilled refugees with green jobs, and to develop a proof-of-concept for ethical migration pathways for the displaced labour, using the UK as a pilot. This platform will leverage Beamery's expertise in talent intelligence and technology.

From a social impact perspective, the project aims to contribute to improve the lives of refugees and displaced individuals, contribute to the urgent global need for skilled professionals to deliver the green transition and create a more sustainable and equitable future for all.

The Online Safety Act introduced a new UK regulatory framework to improve user safety online, imposing duties on online service providers to prevent users encountering illegal and harmful content. It granted Ofcom increased regulatory powers requiring a proactive approach to user safety, protection of children, user rights, transparency in service design and operation, as well as the implementation of underpinning governance, risk and compliance.

In 2025, the compliance timelines under the Act have started to bite, with over 100,000 affected online services required to complete risk assessments starting from March 2025. Companies who fail to comply risk enforcement action which could result in significant fines linked to their qualifying worldwide revenue. The Online Safety Act has come hot on the heels of the EU Digital Services Act, which is designed to create a safer, fairer and more transparent online environment by imposing obligations on digital service providers operating in the EU, many of which are also subject to the UK online safety regulatory regime.

Deloitte’s Digital Regulation team is supporting in-scope businesses through all phases of the regulatory compliance lifecycle across the new UK and EU online safety regulations. We provide ‘legal+’ multi-disciplinary services, bringing lawyers together with other disciplines from across Deloitte, including risk and compliance specialists, to support clients on their regulation compliance journeys.

Below are some of examples of how we are helping our clients to meet the requirements of the Online Safety Act and keep their users, including children, safe online.

Risk Assessments

A continuing and increasing theme across online content regulation globally is the requirement for online safety risk assessments and reports. Deloitte’s Digital Regulation team supported global organisations with preparation for and execution of their first Illegal Content Risk Assessments under the Online Safety Act, designing the risk assessment methodologies, reviewing existing policies and advising on changes to the clients’ processes.

Regulation Mapping

Deloitte supported a global online platform with regulatory mapping and controls expansion, tracking to the requirements of the Online Safety Act, as well as the EU Digital Services Act and other intersecting regulations such as the EU’s AI Act. We conducted regulatory reviews and mapped those across to the client’s existing controls and mitigations, as well as guidance on the design and implementation of required controls.

Regulatory Readiness

Deloitte provided legal expertise to support a global tech company’s regulatory readiness for key digital regulations, particularly the Online Safety Act. Our work involved collaborating closely with the client’s risk and compliance stakeholders to advise on the applicability of the relevant regulations, identifying core workstreams and developing actionable step plans to operationalise compliance.

We have continued to support and introduce our clients to government incentives. This enables them to work toward environmental targets whilst having confidence in funding.

R&D Tax Claims for Biodiversity Development

Recent BNG (Biodiversity Net Gain) legislation has introduced a requirement that wildlife habitats must be left in a measurably better state after land or property development work is undertaken. We worked with a company who help developers meet these new requirements. Their large team of Ecologists are developing new methods and techniques to promote and accelerate biodiversity gain, as well as investigating new ways to characterise and quantify biodiversity. Deloitte worked with the client (who had not made R&D claims before) to understand the work being undertaken and the extent to which this activity fulfilled the R&D regime criteria. The benefit gained through the claim will help the client to continue to develop their scientific and technical understanding of biodiversity and how it can be improved / accelerated and the experience gained through the claim process will support their future claims for work of this nature.

R&D Tax Claims for work to decarbonise electricity generation and supply

As the UK progresses decarbonisation to meet “net zero” demands through increased wind and solar power usage, some existing power stations are being reconfigured so that they will no longer generate power but instead will in future provide “inertia” for the grid, which is critical for stable operation. Other power stations that are continuing to generate electricity will need to change their modes of operation to meet the emerging demands of net zero and have needed development work to understand the limitations of the existing power plant equipment as well as trials to investigate their new operating conditions. The Deloitte R&D tax team assisted a client in their application of the R&D criteria to the development work and prepared R&D claims centred on the full-scale experimental trials that needed to be performed, and helped to ensure that only the appropriate costs were claimed. The R&D claims will support the client as they continue to invest in meeting decarbonisation targets.