Assurance of influential 'warts and all' report

Two Tomorrows has provided independent assurance of The Co-operative’s 2011 sustainability report.

The report, titled 'Inspiring Through Co-operation', covers The Co-operative’s 2011 performance against its Ethical Plan, setting out clearly where it has or hasn’t achieved its targets and, crucially, providing over 40 performance benchmarks allowing for direct comparison with its sector peers. The report is consistent with the latest GRI G3.1 guidelines, and is GRI checked to the highest application level of A+.

Our observations in the assurance statement included:

• The Ethical Plan is a leading example of a commitment to address stakeholder issues, sustainability and ethics. Integration of this commitment into the business planning cycle enables change to be driven through the business.
• The Co-operative has taken a leading position in campaigning on sustainability issues and on its transparency around public policy interventions for a number of years. We look forward to seeing finalisation of the new strategy for public policy engagement, as the issue of corporate engagement with government is gaining increasing public awareness.
• The new strategy for community investment is to be welcomed and there are opportunities to deepen the measurement of community impact to cover other material areas such as relevant sponsorships in order to better reflect the extent of The Co-operative’s community investment.

This is the sixth straight year we have assured this influential and highly regarded sustainability report.

The assurance we undertake for The Co-operative involves extensive analysis of the reliability of data and claims in its report. In addition, we assess how well the organisation understands its material issues and is responding to the issues that matter most to stakeholders. Our work is carried out in accordance with the AA1000 Assurance Standard (AA1000AS).

Our previous assurance of The Co-operative's 2009 and 2010 reports won Credibility Through Assurance awards at the CR Reporting Awards (CRRA).

Our assurance statement in The Co-operative 2011 sustainability report