Sustainability indicators tell us and our stakeholders about our economic, environmental and social performance.

Sustainability indicators

We have set up a number of criteria for the indicators we use. Indicators should be:

• Relevant to the nature of our business
• Measurable over time
• Fully under the control of our business
• Appropriate in number and therefore able to be managed
• Flexible enough to move in the face of emerging issues
• Helpful to our business and to our stakeholders.
• Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 2002 Guidelines specify 97 separate indicators of sustainability performance across economic, environmental and social dimensions, of which 50 are identified as 'core'. This means they are significant to most companies and of interest to most stakeholders. These are therefore considered generally to apply.

The remaining 47 indicators are termed 'additional', and are meant to apply in company-specific circumstances.

We have not tried to use all the GRI indicators - either core or additional. We have, however, looked carefully at them all and considered their usefulness and value both to us and to our stakeholders, using the criteria above.

Business Impact Review Group (BIRG)

We have also reviewed and considered indicators suggested by Business in the Community (BITC) through their Business Impact Review Group (BIRG), of which we were a member in 2003. The BIRG was formed following publication of BITC's Winning with Integrity report in November 1999.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)

In December 1999, the UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) published Quality of life counts, which contained a set of around 150 core indicators of sustainable development to be used in future to monitor national progress. We've also looked carefully at these indicators, together with those of the GRI and BITC, and have put together an Indicators Comparison Table showing these indicators and those we've used in our report, with links to where they can be found