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The Prince of Wales has set in train work to make it easier for
businesses to formally calculate the social costs of their activities.
He has instructed six of the staff in his Charities Office to ‘look at
ways of enabling sustainability to become embedded more effectively in
... accounting in the public and private sectors’.
While the prince may apply the findings in his own commercial ventures, among them the Duchy Originals company, he made clear that the prime purpose of the Accounting for Sustainability project was to help business at large to find ways of presenting externalized costs that do not at present show up in formal accounts. The team will draw on National Audit Office expertise and has financial backing from Aviva, BP, Camelot, HSBC, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Standard Chartered.
‘In the 20th century, accountancy made a number of modifications to include new costs which had begun to take on more significance in modern business: for example, pensions costs are now included,’ said the prince. ‘In our current century we appear to have reached a point where further costs need to be measured and accounted for, [such as] the value of dwindling natural resources and the cost of increasing atmospheric pollution. At the moment, these costs often do not appear in anyone’s books.’
Project staff will commission research from the Saïd Business School into how such costs can be included in published audited accounts, ‘perhaps in standard satellite accounts that are independently audited’. Kite-marking of companies that practise sustainability accounting is also under consideration.
While the prince may apply the findings in his own commercial ventures, among them the Duchy Originals company, he made clear that the prime purpose of the Accounting for Sustainability project was to help business at large to find ways of presenting externalized costs that do not at present show up in formal accounts. The team will draw on National Audit Office expertise and has financial backing from Aviva, BP, Camelot, HSBC, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Standard Chartered.
‘In the 20th century, accountancy made a number of modifications to include new costs which had begun to take on more significance in modern business: for example, pensions costs are now included,’ said the prince. ‘In our current century we appear to have reached a point where further costs need to be measured and accounted for, [such as] the value of dwindling natural resources and the cost of increasing atmospheric pollution. At the moment, these costs often do not appear in anyone’s books.’
Project staff will commission research from the Saïd Business School into how such costs can be included in published audited accounts, ‘perhaps in standard satellite accounts that are independently audited’. Kite-marking of companies that practise sustainability accounting is also under consideration.
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