Our CSR Annual Review outlines our approach and reports on our performance against key environmental, social and economic indicators from January to December 2010, unless otherwise stated. We report on CSR annually – our last report was published in July 2010.
The Review covers the activities of Scottish Power Limited (ScottishPower) in the UK, but excludes ScottishPower Renewables and other IBERDROLA Group activities in the UK.
We have continued to align our reporting to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI3) framework in line with the IBERDROLA Group. In addition, we have continued to report on issues not covered by the GRI framework where our stakeholders have indicated that this is important to them.
We have sought to provide a comprehensive, accurate and transparent account of our approach to key issues, our performance over the period and to present this information within the context of current legislative, regulatory and market influences.
Where we have not reported against a GRI indicator, this is generally explained within the appropriate section of the Review – for example, the use of child or forced labour is prohibited by EU law.
This year we have presented the information in core sections, as follows:
- Economic
- Environment
- Social
Materiality
We continue to focus our reporting on the issues that our stakeholders consider to be the most important, as well as key issues of national and international policy development and concern.
The drivers for determining our most material issues are:
- Areas of significant public policy development, particularly those that have resulted in new legislation, regulations or guidelines and those that our senior management team have discussed with Government representatives, external experts and opinion formers
- Topics that have played a prominent part in stakeholder dialogue during the year. These are fed in to our CSR Steering Group by business representatives from their on-going stakeholder communications and via the Environment Forum. In addition, we assess feedback from our annual CSR stakeholder sessions in Glasgow and Chester
- We also assess public opinion by analysing media coverage and commentary
From an environmental perspective, the most material issues continued to be climate change and carbon reduction, emissions to air and biodiversity conservation.
In the UK during 2010, the key social issues continued to be rising energy prices and fuel poverty, as highlighted by Government, NGOs, consumer groups and charities, customers and the media.
As a result, we have given prominence to these issues in the Review and sought to clearly explain our position regarding these issues, as well as initiatives undertaken during 2010 and a summary of our performance.
With a major programme of investment planned in upgrading the UK’s electricity infrastructure, energy companies’ approach to development and their commercial strategies in terms of the types of projects they choose, have grown in prominence as material stakeholder issues. Forecasts show that public demand for energy will continue to grow, however, there is a degree of public opposition to almost every kind of electricity infrastructure development.
Wherever possible, we have compiled the data in this CSR Annual Review to provide a like for like comparison on previous year’s reports. In some instances, where we have introduced new systems, for example in employee training and development, it has not been possible to provide a direct comparison for some data.
A full PDF version of the Review will be available to download shortly.
