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Camelot

Serving the nation’s dreams

Corporate Responsibility Report 2008

Our approach to corporate responsibility continues to be endorsed externally. During the year our rankings in four of the indices compiled by Business in the Community (BITC) reached the highest category and we were also awarded a further BITC "Big Tick".

We have now achieved Platinum status in BITC’s indices for Corporate Responsibility and the Environment – with scores over 96.5% and 95% respectively.

We are delighted that our commitment to marketing the lottery responsibly has been recognised by BITC, with the awarding of a further Big Tick and an "Highly Commended" in the BITC Responsible Marketing Award. We also achieved reaccreditation for our Big Tick for Environmental Leadership, in recognition of our continued effort to lead by example in reducing the environmental impact of a major business operation.

During the year we responded to recommendations by The Reassurance Network (opens in new window), who were our independent assurance providers for 2006/07. They had called for us to:

Review the ownership and protection of Camelot’s unique culture.

Work is ongoing in this area. We did not hold our normal staff survey in order to minimise disruption to staff during the transition period and to enable the company to more effectively prepare for the transition to the next lottery Licence. However, we will review our approach to the annual staff survey and give consideration to carrying it out on a more regular basis in 2008/09. All of our learning and development programmes, including the Above and Beyond scheme, are underpinned by the Camelot behaviours and values. During 2008/09 we will review the culture of Camelot to assess if changes need to be made for the new Licence period.

Formally embed both regulated and non-regulated elements of corporate responsibility.

We are developing a Code for Corporate Responsibility, which we expect to be signed off later in 2008. This will more explicitly lay out our regulatory requirements and the areas in which we exceed them. We are also extending our strategies for preventing excessive and underage play as we enter the new Licence period.

We are regulated by the National Lottery Commission (NLC), entirely separately from the gambling sector and the Gambling Act. The terms of our operating Licence include strong commitments to protecting our players, but we take pride in going above and beyond those requirements. Our work to educate players, to develop game design tools and to create additional online safeguards are just a few of the areas in which we exceed the requirements placed on us.

For more detail see Responsible play.

Clarify our strategy for community support and employee involvement.

We undertook a review of our community investment strategy. As a result, we rolled out a revised programme in May 2008. For more detail read our sections on Employee participation and Community investment.

Consider the rollout of further Licence compliance training

We are designing a comprehensive module-based training package which will be role-based. The package will include a mixture of elements, including desk- top training, and will be designed to be tailored to individuals’ needs over a three-year period. The first module will be completed by the whole company during 2009.

In the year ahead we will address the new recommendations made by our new assurance providers, Deloitte. These are:

• More formal involvement of the CR and environment teams within the transition and business transformation work programmes with the purpose of further embedding CR into operations and thereby meeting third Licence commitments
• Review the stakeholder engagement processes, including which stakeholder groups should be liaised with and the channels through which Camelot should communicate with them
• Review of Next Step commitments and key performance indicators to ensure that they are aligned with CR strategy, the proposed CR Code and the third Licence requirements.

We also took some important steps of our own during the year to strengthen the management of corporate responsibility and sharing best practice. These included:

• Chairing and overseeing the roll out of a global Responsible Gaming Framework and a European Responsible Gaming Standards
• The formal sign-off of revised Terms of References for the Advisory Panel for Corporate Responsibility
• Our contribution to the BITC Integrated Reporting Peer Group sharing knowledge in the area of Corporate Responsibility Reporting, Stakeholder Engagement and integration of responsible marketing principles in our operations
• Our Chief Executive, Dianne Thompson, sitting on the Business in the Community (BITC) Marketplace Leadership Taskforce. The Taskforce looks at best practice in responsible marketing, how a company’s core product or service impacts on society or considers issues in the supply chain
• Co-sponsoring and giving evidence to the All-Party Parliamentary Group’s inquiry into vulnerable customers. We also helped to publicise the results. The report can be read here (opens in new window).

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