OUR KEY ISSUES

As a large, national business, we face a wide range of differing challenges in relation to our social, environmental and ethical impacts. In order to determine where we should focus our efforts, we assess and prioritise each issue against set criteria and utilise the views of both internal and external stakeholders.

Our most material issues include:

Employing and retaining people of ability and integrity, who support our business principles of honesty, respect and encouragement

Engaging our Partners and customers as agents for change for sustainable living

Dealing fairly with our suppliers and selling responsibly sourced, quality products

Making a positive difference to the communities where we do business

Responding and adapting to climate change minimising the impact of our built operations

Minimising the impact of our built operations

Reducing waste generated by our operations and increasing the proportion of waste that can be used as a resource.

OUR HIGHLIGHTS

• Waitrose named UK’s most compassionate supermarket 2009/10.

• John Lewis achieved its target to sell 100% FSC-certified garden furniture.

• Charitable and community contributions of £7.9 million.

• The 10th anniversary of our Golden Jubilee Trust charity secondment scheme.

• Waitrose and John Lewis exceeding shop energy efficiency targets.

• Achieved BREEAM ‘Very Good’ rating and Considerate Constructors Scheme ‘Beyond compliance’ performance at Waitrose Wellington.

• Reduced emissions from transport by 6.3% relative to £million sales since 2005/06.

• Activity mobilised through our Partners in Sport programme has supported 5,000 Partners via branch funding bids in the last 12 months and, to date, 160 Partners have been involved in coach training.

OUR CHALLENGES

During the next decade, we are looking to double the size of our business but at the same time, we have also committed to delivering absolute reductions in our operational emissions. Therefore one real challenge is for us to decouple business growth from our emissions (page 7).

As part of our growth ambitions, we are exploring a number of new routes to market for our products. For example, Waitrose is trialling partnerships with Welcome Break, Shell and Boots to reach more customers in the food-to-go sector. As part of our due diligence in establishing such partnerships, we work to ensure that we are satisfied that the third party is committed to conducting its business in an economically, environmentally and socially responsible way. This is an area where we wish to strengthen our approach further, by developing the assessment of new business partnerships and investment opportunities in relation to CSR.

During the year, we created a new division, Partnership Services, to provide simple and efficient shared services for Partners and to support business success. This is an example of the types of changes required internally to develop our business. In order to improve efficiency and effectiveness over the long term, posts may be declared redundant or terms of employment changed. However, the Partnership’s point of difference in such circumstances is our commitment to make every effort to provide Partners with continued employment in the business.

Our supply chain also presents particular challenges, such as the sourcing of certified sustainable palm oil and unravelling the complexities of our cotton supply chain (page 5), while the implementation of a new Partnership-wide strategy to enable us to better assess the value and impacts of our community activity (page 6) will also require considerable effort.