Risk

Our management of corporate responsibility is effectively integrated with our management of business risks. The corporate governance section of our Annual Report provides information on these processes.

Understanding the views of stakeholders also enables us to spot and respond to new concerns and issues, thereby reducing our overall risk and compliance costs.

Many of the corporate responsibility topics that we tackle help to insulate us from cost rises: for example, cutting our use of energy and bulk materials – which is one of our environmental commitments – reduces our exposure to future price rises.

Corporate responsibility risks are included in our risk assessment process. These are reviewed twice yearly to identify and record possible risks. The results are used to plan our internal audit and risk management programmes. The Group Internal Audit Plan for 2007/08 included audits on paper sourcing, waste management and the application of our ethical sourcing principles.

This year we have also combined our ethical auditing of suppliers with the general auditing process used to assess suppliers for manufacturing risk and capability.