UK BAT.COM - Sustainability reporting

We began international social reporting in 2001-02 to help us embed the principles of corporate social responsibility (CSR) throughout the Group. In April 2009 we published the second Sustainability Report for British American Tobacco p.l.c.

Our social reporting has also allowed us to meet greater demands for corporate transparency and to continue improving our management decision-making through understanding changing expectations in society.

We follow a rigorous approach, involving:

• Governance:  Group CSR performance is monitored through a Board CSR Committee and local and regional audit and CSR governance committees;
• International reporting:  Our companies around the world engage in dialogue and both British American Tobacco p.l.c. and local companies produce regular reports;
• Standards:  We follow the AA1000 Standard and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines;
• Assurance:  Rigorous external verification is applied to all our reports;
• Dialogue:  Our reporting is based on independently-facilitated stakeholder dialogue;
• Management support:  Local social reporting and CSR managers are appointed across the Group and we hold international social reporting training and CSR workshops.

In 2001-02, our companies in 14 countries took part in social reporting.  This has expanded and, at year end 2008, our companies were producing Social Reports covering 35 countries and the European Union at a political level. Shorter stakeholder reports covering seven countries were also produced. 

All the reports are independently verified and are based on independently facilitated stakeholder dialogue.  The reports follow the AA1000 Standard and GRI Guidelines.  The shorter reports typically focus on a particular issue or stakeholder group and follow the AA1000 Standard as closely as possible for the type of report, while not all reporting against the GRI indicators.

In our Reporting download centre, you can find pdfs of past years' Social Reports, a list of all our companies’ reports to date and pdfs of their most recent reports if published in English or in English translations or summaries.

Group CSR governance

All our companies are required to demonstrate clearly defined management responsibility for CSR, including those not engaged in social reporting. Group CSR performance is monitored through a Board CSR Committee chaired by Non-Executive Director, Karen de Segundo, and at regional, area and local levels through combined audit and CSR committees. The structure aims to support the embedding of CSR principles Group-wide by monitoring the Group’s performance against the Core Beliefs in our Statement of Business Principles.
  
For more information, see Group CSR governance.

Independent standards and assurance

The AA1000 Standard was established by the Institute of Social and Ethical Accountability, known as AccountAbility, a non-profit institute working to promote accountability innovations that advance responsible business practices and the broader accountability of civil society and public organisations.  Its members include businesses, NGOs and research bodies internationally.  The AA1000 Standard, followed by all our companies in social reporting, encourages transparency and impartiality in reporting through nine key principles.

Ernst & Young are our preferred assurance provider for sustainability reporting worldwide. Ernst & Young’s independent assurance activities on our Sustainability Report 2008 are described in their assurance statement in the Report. Their sustainability assurance team for British American Tobacco has been drawn from their global climate change and sustainability services network, which undertakes similar engagements with a number of significant UK and international businesses.

GRI Guidelines:  The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was convened in 1997 by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme, to produce globally applicable guidelines for organisations reporting on the economic, environmental and social dimensions of their activities.  The GRI Guidelines are followed by about 1,000 reporters in over 60 countries.  To promote comparability between organisations, they offer a reporting framework, recommended topics and GRI indicators of economic, environmental and social performance which we and many other organisations follow.

Dialogue

All our participating companies develop dialogue structures to enable them to respond to their cultural, economic and political environments and local stakeholders’ interests.  Independent local facilitators run these dialogues and produce independently verified dialogue reports.  Examples of local facilitators include ethics and facilitation consultancies, well-known public figures in the media, politics or academia, former diplomats, human resources specialists and negotiation experts.

In 2008, our companies were again able to engage with a broad range of stakeholders.  Although there is still reluctance amongst the tobacco control and public health communities to participate, stakeholders in these groups joined the dialogue in some countries.

See countries covered by our social reporting and find out what we have learned from dialogue so far.

For the issues raised in dialogue across all participating countries, see our International Issues Map. 

- Download the international issues map (537 kb)