One of the UK’s largest energy companies has taken the unusual step of
asking a group of stakeholders to assure its annual CSR report.
EDF
Energy, which generates seven per cent of the UK’s electricity and
employs 11,300 people, has formed a ‘stakeholder assurance panel’ to
comment on whether the company’s CSR report is ‘honest, relevant and
believable’. The panel’s unedited assurance statement will be published
in the report, which will appear in hard copy form as well as online.
David
Ferguson, EDF’s corporate responsibility executive, told EP the
intention was ‘to make sure the report is addressing our stakeholders’
interests and concerns’.
The panel comprises representatives
from the workforce, customers, regulatory bodies, consumer groups,
environmental campaigners, suppliers and business partners. As well as
providing the assurance statement, the panel will be asked to recommend
what areas the report should cover before it is written. It will
comment on whether the final draft covers the relevant issues, is
honest and complete, and strikes the right note.
The panel’s
comments will, however, be accompanied by a traditional verification
statement from an as yet unnamed independent auditor.
Panel
members, who are being paid expenses, have already met for half a day
to talk about what they would like in the report and will meet for a
second half-day to review the final document. They will be helped by
the sustainable development think-tank Forum for the Future. Ferguson
said he hoped this approach, which has been approved by EDF’s
directors, ‘will question and validate the spirit and honesty of the
report’.
Lucy Candlin, director of Future Perfect, a
consultancy that provides assurance of non-financial reports, said the
idea was interesting but posed some challenges.
She said:
‘It’s no bad thing that EDF is moving in this direction, but it looks
as if the panel will just be reading the report and saying, “That
sounds OK. They have covered the issues we wanted them to.” They’re not
going to be doing any robust checking in terms of the reliability of
the information in the report, so that raises questions in an informed
mind about the actual value of such an assurance statement.
‘What
if the traditional verifiers say they are not happy with the data and
the stakeholder panel says it feels the report is fine? There needs to
be some thought as to how the two assurance processes interact.’
