Stakeholder and community engagement is fundamentally important for any business, such as ours, which holds property on a long-term basis throughout the country. We regard such engagement as pivotal as our prime shopping centres have been developed to be a focal part of the wider community we seek to serve. Equally, we are all called to play our part in safeguarding the environment within which we operate and make best use of natural resources while maximising recycling and the use of energy from renewable resources. We are proud to be ranked as a leader in corporate responsibility in the property sector by the major benchmarking agencies: - BITC Corporate Responsibility Index, FTSE4Good and JSE SRI Indices in 2008. Additionally, we successfully joined the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes in 2008 and performed well in the inaugural Sunday Times Best Green Companies Awards.
Liberty International continues to work with The Carbon Trust and a major specialist consultancy to reduce the carbon footprint for its shopping centres and other property assets. Each of our ten directly managed centres will receive a tailored report on the potential for further carbon emission reduction and the implementation costs envisaged to achieve improvement. We continue to satisfy most of our electricity supply requirements from renewable sources and an increasing volume of the waste generated by retailers and the public at our shopping centres is being recycled or converted into energy.
The programme to create comprehensive travel plans for all of our shopping centres is almost complete and these plans have won praise from customers, retailers and local authorities keen to improve access to our centres by public and ‘alternative’ (cycling and walking) transport and care for the local environment. We are also closely engaged with the innovative Legible London project to improve way finding in central London which will benefit our Covent Garden London business. Our three year partnership with the national cycling charity Sustrans in support of their ‘Bike It’ project underpins both our commitment to the broader environment and the health and safety of children.
Our community programme has continued to expand under the broad heading of ‘young people and community engagement’. Our work with Catch 22 (formerly Rainer Crime Concern) in Nottingham has entered a second, larger, phase and, working with our Covent Garden London office, Catch 22 have initiated another project, involving younger children drawn from a primary school in Covent Garden area. We have agreed to support three new charitable partners working on youth projects at four of our centres. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (The Potteries), Ocean Youth Trust Scotland (Braehead), and Outward Bound Trust (The Glades and The Chimes). Work on these projects has started and will roll out throughout 2009.
Liberty International does not progress its CR agenda merely by funding the projects of others. Staff in every part of the Liberty International group are involved and our work with local communities around our shopping centres could not be undertaken without the hands-on contribution of the team based at each centre. Their input is vital and I thank them all for it.
2008 saw major presentations to staff about every aspect of our CR work and we will continue to engage directly with staff, suppliers and customers so that our vision is shared and encourage active participation from staff throughout the organisation to achieve our goals. Throughout the year investors and others have sought information about the scope and impact of our CR programme and I am delighted that very positive feedback arising from such contacts has been regularly received.
When our staff undertake charitable initiatives in their own time they deserve our recognition and support. I am delighted that a CR fund now exists to offer a contribution towards the sums raised by individual members of staff undertaking charitable fundraising activities.
Ours is a business founded on people and places and the ownership of prime property assets. We are very much a part of the diverse communities we serve and will always work to enhance our involvement in partnership with others. We remain committed to developing our community links and maintaining our environmental credentials.
Patrick Burgess
Chairman
