Chief Executive's statement

Welcome to the Corporate Responsibility section of our corporate website which provides details of our Good Together programme and the progress we have made in this important area since the programme was launched in 2009. Our website's corporate responsibility section reflects performance during the financial year 2011/12.

We are proud of our achievements in the year as Good Together continues to win accolades and external recognition, picking up the award for Best CR Programme at the Business Travel Industry Awards and achieving Platinum status in the BITC (Business in the Community) CR Index 2012.

Good Together is a fundamental part of our company strategy, which focuses on the three key stakeholder areas of Team Engagement, Customer Heartbeat and Profitable Growth.  This year we more closely aligned our Good Together programme to reflect these areas and we now have 3 key pillars of activity around ‘Team and Community’, ‘Customer Wellbeing’ and ‘Environment’. Within these areas key highlights include:

Team Engagement We have industry leading training for our team members and community programmes around the world that give people hope and opportunity.  To date 3,600 skills-based nationally recognised qualifications have been awarded to our hotels and restaurant team members, whilst 558 Costa team members have graduated from our development programme.  Our teams have raised over £1 million for WaterAid and £2.5m for the Costa Foundation which has now opened 24 schools providing education for more than 14,500 children in coffee growing communities.

Customer Wellbeing We know our customers care about environmental, social and health issues and we want to be recognised as a company that provides customers with trusted products and offers them an informed choice. Costa already serves 100% RFA certified Costa coffee globally and in the past year has begun to source all its pork, beef and poultry from British Farms. As a signatory to the Government’s voluntary Public Health Responsibility Deal we are working closely with the Department of Health to support their key pledges including targeted reductions in salt and artificial additives. 

Profitable Growth As a major UK business we have a responsibility to be a good corporate citizen.  It also makes good business sense to be more efficient and safeguard our environment. As part of our commitment to this, we are proud to be one of the few hospitality companies included within the FTSE4Good Index.  We have best in sector energy, waste and water initiatives and continue to lead in sustainable construction, opening our 10th green hotel and restaurant site in January 2012.  We now divert 83% of waste from our hotels and restaurants away from landfill and our significant investment and innovation in energy reduction has led to an improvement in carbon emission efficiency of 10.97% relative to sales.

I am delighted that during the year we have further integrated Good Together into the way we do business every day.  This has enabled us to review our targets and set ourselves more stretching longer term targets which are firmly part of our business plans, a good example being our stated goal to create 10,000 new UK jobs in the next three years through our ambitious growth programme.

Whitbread is committed to being a force for good in the communities in which we operate.  We are making significant progress with our Good Together programme and very much welcome any comments or thoughts so we can be even better together.

Andy Harrison, May 2012