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(Photo captioned: During 2010, John Lewis received the Scottish Business in the Community Large Business of the Year award for its flexible and innovative working practices. In addition, John Lewis Newcastle won a Business in the Community (BITC) ‘Big Tick’ for its Community Liaison Programme and a reaccreditation in the ‘Talent’ category, John Lewis Glasgow retained its Investing in Young People award and John Lewis Cambridge was highly commended in the BITC East of England Business Volunteering Team Award for 2010.)


(Three Business in the Community awards)


About this report

Having produced separate Waitrose and John Lewis reports every other year, we now produce an annual Partnership-wide summary of our CSR performance, achievements, challenges and external recognition. This change better reflects the management and governance of CSR issues in the Partnership and helps to build a fuller, single picture of our company’s CSR activity. This report is aimed largely at the informed CSR community.

Scope and boundaries

We published our last report in November 2009, but as our aspiration is to better align the release of our reports with our financial Annual Report and Accounts, we are producing our report earlier this year. Therefore, this report covers our operations’ activities from autumn 2009 to summer 2010.

Unless otherwise stated, performance data relates to our 2009/10 trading year.

The report focuses on those areas of our business where we have operational control. Therefore, new and experimental routes to market, and our Middle East-based stores operated by Fine Fare Food Market LLC, are excluded from our CSR reporting boundary and KPIs at this time (see diagram on page 1).

This report aims to provide a ‘warts and all’ account of our social, ethical and environmental performance. It has been prepared in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) G3 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, which provide a globally recognised framework for reporting (see page 39) and has been self-assessed at Level C.

Assurance and independent recognition

While we recognise that some stakeholders value external assurance, this year we have decided to focus our resources in other areas related to improving our CSR reporting. Therefore, we do not currently formally assure our CSR reporting. Nonetheless, we remain committed to open and honest disclosure, and this report is part of that process. In addition, our business’ co-ownership structure, which is built around the principles of openness and transparency, supports this commitment.

We also believe that our involvement in external initiatives like Business in the Community’s CR Index and the British Retail Consortium’s ‘A Better Retailing Climate’, as well as feedback from stakeholders and the best practice standards and independent certification schemes we use, add value and credibility to our sustainability work and the reporting of our performance.