The Co-operative Group is to make a major change to its social reporting regime.
Until now the UK group has reported on the main aspects of its business in a rolling programme that has assessed different parts each year and taken three years to cover the entire operation.
Now it has decided to scrap that approach and to report yearly on the whole business, which includes the Co-operative Bank and the Co-operative Insurance Society (CIS) as well as travel, food and funeral services.
‘The idea is to develop a core set of social performance indicators applicable to all our businesses and report on these annually from 2004,’ said Co-op social accountability manager Peter Rogan.
The group, which employs 50,000 people in the UK and has an annual turnover of £5billion ($7.9bn), has set up a social and co-operative performance working group to develop indicators by May 2003.
Rogan stressed, however, that existing social reporting systems within parts of the group would not be affected, and that the Co-operative Bank and CIS would continue to produce their own reports each year.
The changes, which are announced in the group’s latest social accountability summary report, would pave the way for a groupwide consolidated financial report and make it easier to reflect the ‘rapid developments’ in social reporting, Rogan said.
He added that the main purpose of the summary report, which is verified by KPMG, was ‘to draw a line under our current social reporting programme and chart our future course.’