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Surrey Junior Citizen Event arranged by O2 and Surrey Police
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| This section has been independently assessed by Dr. Malcolm A. Shaw. |
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The GRI assessment of the mmO2 plc corporate responsibility report falls outside the remit of our external assurance providers Ernst & Young.
This is the first time, we report in accordance with the sustainability reporting guidelines issued by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The Guidelines provide a comprehensive set of indicators covering economic, environmental and ethical indicators of a company's performance.
We structure our corporate responsibility reporting according to the Business in the Community (BITC) reporting guidelines. The report is divided into four main areas of activity – marketplace, environment and sustainability, workplace ad community. We have also included an additional section on health because we know that it is an area of concern to some of our stakeholders. In addition to the BITC reporting guidelines we aim to adhere to the GRI sustainability reporting guidelines. To deepen the process of defining material social, environmental or ethical issues we have this year complemented the reporting guidelines with the Five-Part Materiality Test developed by AccountAbility.
How we report against the GRI Principles
The GRI sets out 11 Principles toward which reporting organisations should strive. We report against these Principles to ensure that we present and balanced and reasonable account of economic, environmental and social performance. We cross-reference the information in the report to the relevant GRI indicators. We also provide a GRI index on this website.
Transparency
To generate trust among our stakeholders we have to be transparent about our operations. This externally verified corporate responsibility report is one of the media we use to inform individuals and organisations that are affected by our operations. Increasingly we are including more information about out processes and procedures on our website to enable easy access to our information. In addition to the GRI we support other voluntary disclosure guidelines, such as those of BITC and the Association of British Insurers' Social Disclosure Guidelines to ensure that stakeholders can make informed judgements of our processes, procedures and assumptions that underpin this report.
Inclusiveness
This report is aimed at a diverse audience. We deem it important to capture the opinions of a wide range of stakeholders in the preparation of this report. We have undertaken a number of research initiatives to gauge the opinions of employees, investors, non-governmental organisations, business associates, the general public and the media. Going forward we aim to record stakeholder feedback systematically to ensure that as many as possible within O2 understand the needs of our stakeholders.
Auditability
One of our strategic objectives for corporate responsibility is to ensure that we remain open for scrutiny. For the purpose of this report we engage with professional auditors with a strong track record of financial auditing and social, environmental and ethical assurance work. In addition our internal auditors carry out specific corporate responsibility audits and include corporate responsibility indicators in their other audits. We also engage external auditors and certification bodies in our operations that cover environmental management, health and safety, mast siting and quality of our operations. We are continuously improving our record keeping to support audit reviews and supply evidence on request. For the purpose of this report we ask our assurance providers to confirm every statement of the report and review the underlying processes and procedures for management of social, environmental and ethical matters. The auditors' observations are included in their assurance statement.
Completeness
We aim to report on all aspects of our operations that are within the boundaries of our fully owned operations. We are currently reporting on areas that are within our direct control. To portray a more holistic view of our operations and indirect impacts we are engaging with our suppliers to widen the scope of our reporting to also include indirect performance data in our future reports. We report annual performance data and cover areas that may have a longer-term impact, such as child protection.
Relevance
Our reporting aims to capture prime concerns of our stakeholders as well as material, environmental or ethical risks to our business. This process is informed through our stakeholder engagement and research activities.
Sustainability context
We aim to report on our operations against a wider context, e.g. child protection and economic benefits to society. We aim to demonstrate how these bigger issues influence our decision-making and strategy. Going forward we hope to increase and systematically capture our stakeholder engagement. This should accumulate our learning further in how our Company and mobile communications affect society and the physical environment.
Accuracy
To enable stakeholders to establish informed judgements of our business' operations we aim to report exact information and have therefore, not included any estimated figures in our reporting. The systems for data measurement are under constant review by external advisors and our internal audit function. We are also committed to expand our data measurement.
Neutrality
The information contained in this report is aimed to present an unbiased picture of our activities. We aim to give the reader a balanced picture of our achievements and the challenges we face. To accentuate the neutrality of this report we asked a number of individuals and organisations that are independent of O2 to offer us their feedback, which we have included in full throughout report. Our external assurance providers have also made an assessment of the information contained in the report to ensure a balanced presentation of key issues.
Comparability
Our aim is to establish clear comparability on our year-on-year corporate responsibility performance. Since our formation in November 2001 we have worked hard in establishing our data measurement procedures, however, we know that we need to widen the scope of our current data measurements, especially in the field of environment. Our ambition is to improve and extend our reporting on environmental data. We actively engage in benchmarking activities by such as the LBG and sustainability indices.
Clarity
We aim to adhere to different reporting guidelines to help as many readers as possible to make informed opinions of our performance. We report against the BITC, GRI and the ABI guidelines. Our Group-report has also been assessed by Plain English Commission, and we have included a leaflet in German to reach our stakeholders in the German marketplace. We also offer an online version of the report which allows further categorisation of information. The website has been built to enable easy access for those who use special accessibility equipment.
Timeliness
We report on our corporate responsibility performance annually through this dedicated report and through the mmO2 plc Annual Report and Financial Statements, the mmO2 plc Annual Review and our dedicated corporate responsibility website. We update our information on our website through out the year, as appropriate.
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