of suppliers said that Camelot’s commitment to social and environmental responsibilities made a difference to the way they worked with their own suppliers
Have your say
We want to hear what you have to say. At any point in this report you can comment on what is being said on any of our corporate responsibility issues.
Promoting standards
Building good relationships with our suppliers helps us to achieve a key objective – the promotion of corporate responsibility and good environmental management in our supply chain.
We ask suppliers a range of social and environmental questions in our annual survey. For example the survey revealed that 70% of respondents held at least one and often more accreditations to well recognised standards such as ISO9001, ISO14001 or Investors in People. The number with no accreditations fell by 19%.
We also asked how many had policies and reported publicly on key issues like equal opportunities, diversity, ethics, the environment, health and safety, and community investment. We also asked how they went about checking their own supply chains to make sure their own standards aren't undermined.
Suppliers were also asked if our own commitment to social and environmental responsibility affected their own operations. Some 16% said it affected they way they behaved internally, while 13% said it had made a difference to the way they worked with their own suppliers.
In 2004/05 we developed a self–assessment questionnaire based on human rights, the International Labour Organisation conventions (opens in a new window) and sound environmental management. We then identified high risk industry groups, based on social, ethical and environmental risk assessment of our supply chain, and categorised suppliers which fell into these groups accordingly.
We sent the questionnaire to 24 suppliers which were part of these groups and also fell into the high–spend category in their particular group. By doing this we managed to assess 29% of our total spend. Any new supplier we take on who falls into one of the identified main risk areas is now assessed using this same process.
During the year we considered introducing a new clause in all our contracts to cover social, environmental and ethical issues. But having determined that it would be difficult to come up with a clause that had sufficient legal weight, we decided not to pursue this target. Instead, in 2006/07, we plan to introduce a rigorous process to give us assurance that the governance structures of our major suppliers are appropriate. We plan to do this by both seeking information from and engaging with suppliers.
We provide regular training to our supplier development department on sustainable procurement and supplier assessment. We are also seeking certification of Camelot's purchasing procedures, policies and practices by the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply.