The Co-operative Bank has won the UK’s main award for sustainability reporting for the third year running.
The bank was the outright winner for the second consecutive year, having shared the award in 2002 with BT and Shell, which was runner-up this year in a field of 77 – slightly fewer than last year.
Paul Scott, one of the judges of the Awards for Sustainability Reporting organized by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, said the continuing dominance of the bank, which also won last year’s European Sustainability Reporting Award, was a case of success breeding success. ‘They had a good head start because they committed to transparency early. Once you have the systems and people in place, it is a continuing process.’
Among this year’s Acca award winners, CIS and Shell have won or been named as runners-up for the last three years, while Camelot, ScottishPower and Traidcraft have all featured at least once.
However, there were some new faces, including the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency, and the organizers may increase the number of categories to reflect the interest from non-corporates. Four companies – British American Tobacco, BT Group, Powergen and The Co-operative Bank – were commended for their quality of reporting in electronic media.
The main weakness in entries to this category, according to Scott, who is a director of CorporateRegister.com, the largest online directory of corporate non-financial reports, was poor navigation.
Scott said that the credibility of reports appeared to have become more important for companies. Third party verification was much more widely used, some reports now included several independent comments from interested parties, and some reporters ‘were at pains to highlight shortcomings in performance’.
According to figures released by CorporateRegister.com to coincide with the award ceremony, only 15 of the FTSE 100 now fail to produce a non-financial report (of at least six pages of public information), and only F&C Management, an asset manager, produces no such information. Non-financial reporting is also becoming more popular among mid-250 companies, with 26 producing social, environmental, sustainability or CSR reports for the first time in the year to February 2004.