Northern Rock Fifth Community Report 2005
Verification Statement
This is the fifth Northern Rock Community report incorporating social and ethical issues and it reflects an organisation that is proud of its achievements and related performance. Where appropriate these achievements and related performance are reported under the banner of Corporate Responsibility, however they are in place because there is a proven business need and have not been established to ensure a tick in all the relevant boxes. Consequently, there is a strong link between existing business processes and those issues, which naturally fall within the scope of this report.
The activities included within the scope of the report are co-ordinated through a series of working groups, which for the most part reflect the headings contained within the Community Report. A number of the groups have been effective at ensuring a consistent focus is maintained on relevant issues such as community involvement. Once again performance reported for workplace activities has been impressive, for example the creation of substantial training resources within Head office to accommodate a wide ranging in-house training programme, which is delivering a plethora of benefits to the business. Once again, however, performance in the area of the marketplace has not been co-ordinated so effectively and in an attempt to reinvigorate the marketplace group a decision has been made to reconstitute the group.
A major success has been the additional voluntary contributions made by employees to the Community, in addition to the community benefits already delivered through the Northern Rock Foundation. Each year staff democratically select a corporate charity and the substantial funds raised in that year by the tireless committee are delivered to a charity of choice. In 2005, that charity was Macmillan Nurses and in 2006 will be Tiny Lives. In addition, the Northern Rock Foundation supplements those funds with an additional matching amount. The great news for Tiny Lives in 2006 is that the Foundation will double the contribution.
Performance against the 61 targets and management programmes published in the fourth Community report (2005) is impressive. 58 have been fully completed or are in the process of being completed. 2 have been deferred and 1 has not been met. This programme of continual environmental improvement should be commended and one individual programme, the effective communication of the employee Share Plan, has won national recognition in the Institute of Financial Services annual awards.
Strong performance against economic and environmental benchmarks has once again been sustained. Consequently there is now maturity within elements of the programme and many reporting processes demonstrate consistent sustained performance, illustrating that the business is at the forefront of performance particularly in comparison with sector benchmarks.
I can confirm that the information reported in this statement and the more detailed report has been assessed and is accurate. Each individual claim has been verified against information provided by the company or by a third party. Each data reference has been checked, and where estimated data has been presented in previous reports this has also been checked. Data in this report, which has been estimated, will be the subject of future verification.
Julian Ringer
Managing Director
SEQM Limited
Julian Ringer is a Chartered Environmentalist, a Principal Environmental Auditor IEMA (P50), a Lead Environmental Assessor IEMA (L15), and an EMAS verifier in both the UK and Denmark (registered with the relevant member state competent bodies for EMAS)
Note for web report
(More detailed information is available on the Northern Rock website. The web report is a compilation of information, data and commentary from a number of sources)