Camelot, the UK national lottery operator, has published its first social audit.
Ed Mayo, director of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) which audited the report, described the document as ‘one of the most complete social audits conducted by any company worldwide’. It gathered responses from 6000 people across eight stakeholder groups.
The audit revealed that less than half the sample believed Camelot was responsible and trustworthy, even though almost two-thirds of them regularly played the national lottery.
However, Sue Slipman, Camelot’s director of social responsibility, said this was hardly surprising considering recent controversies over the level of directors’ pay, and argued that trust levels in the National Lottery were higher than in many other areas of public life.
She added that suspicion could partly be due to misapprehensions about Camelot’s profits. Research for the audit showed that customers typically expected Camelot to make between 20p and 50p profit out of every pound spent. In fact the figure has been 1p in the pound over the period of the company’s licence.
While campaigners have complained about the lottery encouraging excessive play, research for Camelot showed the public believes fruit machines are more addictive. And research by Bristol University concluded the lottery was a small part of the gambling spend of low-income households.
The most positive aspect of the audit for Camelot was the reaction of staff. More than four out of five said they were proud to work for the company, while about 70 per cent were judged to be ‘satisfied’ based on answers to a group of questions.
Slipman said the audit showed Camelot ‘has gone quite a long way down the road of being a socially responsible company,’ and had thrown up a range of issues, from pay to disability policy, which were now being addressed.
The company has already set up a retailer panel, a staff consultative forum, and promised to assess potential harm to vulnerable players before introducing new games.