External feedback

Performance ratings

In addition to our various stakeholder engagement activities, we use the outcome of our assurance process and benchmarking against the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting guidelines to help improve our CR reporting and inform our CR agenda.

We also benchmark our performance against comparable companies using a number of externally derived indices:

• Sustainability Asset Management’s (SAM) research for the Dow Jones Sustainability Index
• Business in the Community (BITC) Corporate Responsibility Index
• Carbon Disclosure Project’s Annual Information Request
• Experts in Responsible Investment Solution (EIRIS) survey

Our choice of indices is designed to cover the broad spectrum of issues relevant to our environmental, social and governance responsibilities and performance. We use these indices as an objective external measure of the effectiveness of continuous improvement strategies to which we are committed.

In general terms, we will complete specific investor surveys if they represent more than about 0.15 per cent of our shareholder capital. We also provide publicly available information for the surveys of other interested parties and comment factually on their evaluations of the Group.

You can monitor our performance in our CR Reviews.

Assurance

The information and data that we report publicly in our CR Reviews are verified by independent assurors who visit our sites periodically to check that our reporting is accurate, reliable and provides a fair and balanced view of our CR performance.

We also ask them to provide independent assurance that our reporting is not only accurate, robust and credible, but also addresses the concerns of key stakeholders.

As part of this process they assess the quality and content of our reporting against the AccountAbility’s AA1000 assurance model and the Global Reporting Initiative sustainability reporting guidelines.

They also provide advice and guidance on our policies and strategies as they relate to our reporting process, and highlight improvements for our consideration in future reports.

You can download the full statements from the assurors of our latest CR Review here:

Corporate Citizenship Assurance Statement - 2009 CR Review PDF 0.05K

SGS United Kingdom Data Assurance - 2009 CR Review PDF 0.03K