Camelot, the UK national lottery operator, has published its first social audit.
Ed Mayo, director of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) which audited
the report, described the document as ‘one of the most complete social
audits conducted by any company worldwide’. It gathered responses from
6000 people across eight stakeholder groups.
The audit
revealed that less than half the sample believed Camelot was
responsible and trustworthy, even though almost two-thirds of them
regularly played the national lottery.
However, Sue Slipman,
Camelot’s director of social responsibility, said this was hardly
surprising considering recent controversies over the level of
directors’ pay, and argued that trust levels in the National Lottery
were higher than in many other areas of public life.
She
added that suspicion could partly be due to misapprehensions about
Camelot’s profits. Research for the audit showed that customers
typically expected Camelot to make between 20p and 50p profit out of
every pound spent. In fact the figure has been 1p in the pound over the
period of the company’s licence.
While campaigners have
complained about the lottery encouraging excessive play, research for
Camelot showed the public believes fruit machines are more addictive.
And research by Bristol University concluded the lottery was a small
part of the gambling spend of low-income households.
The most
positive aspect of the audit for Camelot was the reaction of staff.
More than four out of five said they were proud to work for the
company, while about 70 per cent were judged to be ‘satisfied’ based on
answers to a group of questions.
Slipman said the audit
showed Camelot ‘has gone quite a long way down the road of being a
socially responsible company,’ and had thrown up a range of issues,
from pay to disability policy, which were now being addressed.
The company has already set up a retailer panel, a staff consultative
forum, and promised to assess potential harm to vulnerable players
before introducing new games.
