CEO Statement
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Making a positive impact on the economy, the environment and society
At Go-Ahead, we continue to put our passengers at the heart of our business, and focus on providing efficient, integrated and responsibly operated bus and rail transport. This approach to our operations remains as important as ever. |
I am pleased to have returned to a company which has been reporting its Corporate Responsibility (CR) activity for the past ten years and I am personally committed to seeing both the level of that activity and our rigorous approach to reporting continue.
At Go-Ahead we are responsible for over one billion passenger journeys each year. We employ over 22,000 people and have over 4,000 suppliers so we are well-placed to make a positive impact on the economy, the environment and society. In this report you can find out how we monitor and manage the impact of our businesses while providing efficient, integrated and responsibly operated bus and rail services.
In today’s world, environmental and social issues continue to play an important role. CR is at the heart of everything we do at Go-Ahead. One of the Group’s strategic priorities is to be sustainable and run our companies in a safe, socially and environmentally responsible manner*. Our values of putting passengers first, innovation and empowering our employees to deliver a quality service underpin our approach. These issues are at the heart of our business strategy and we work closely
with colleagues, passengers, suppliers, government, researchers, community groups and industry experts to innovate so that we remain at the forefront of our sector. Our aim is to provide passengers with quality, affordable bus and rail services which meet the requirements of the communities we operate in. We also aim to ensure that our main suppliers operate sustainably and ethically.
We appreciate that for many in the UK, recent years have been tough financially. We continue to do all we can to offer value for money while at the same time ensuring our services are convenient, reliable and environmentally efficient. For Go-Ahead, a sustainable long-lasting business has to be driven by clear values: we have continued to adhere to this philosophy and our businesses have delivered another full year of activity in the CR sphere. We are extremely proud that during the year we were the first UK transport operator to be reaccredited with the Carbon Trust Standard after continuing to reduce our carbon emissions. Go-Ahead achieved silver in the Business in the Community (BITC) Corporate Responsibility Index this year. Extensive feedback from BITC has enabled us to take action and improve our weaker scores.
We continue to focus on reducing our environmental impacts through our Driving Energy Further initiatives to cut our energy consumption across all our operations. The environment section of this report provides more details on pages 12 and 13. Our overall aim through Driving Energy Further is to reduce our CO2 emissions per passenger journey by 20% by 2015*; we have achieved a reduction of 12% to date, an improvement of 3% on the previous year. I believe we are well on the way to achieving our 20% target.
This year our plans for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games have been high on our agenda. The Games have been hailed as the first public transport Games, and we have worked closely with the Olympic Delivery Authority to ensure preparations to transport spectators to and from the Games are well underway.
The economic conditions of the past 12 months have posed challenges for all UK businesses. In these circumstances, putting the customer at the heart of our business and focusing on providing efficient, integrated and responsibly operated bus and rail transport become more important, not less.
That is what we have delivered, and as the new Chief Executive of Go-Ahead I will ensure that our commitment to CR continues.
David Brown, Group Chief Executive
September 2011