Sd3 have been monitoring the growth in the number of non-financial reporters over the past decade. While the trend continues upward, the growth has slowed as the need to communicate around sustainability and corporate responsibility has become accepted by all but the most retrograde of large companies.

For the 2005 reporting year, Sd3 decided to concentrate its reporting research on the growth of external report assurance; specifically in the UK's FTSE100 listing of largest companies. In 2001, our first year for comparison, only 9% of the index used external assurance. Incremental growth occurred in successive years until in 2005 just under half of top UK companies were reaping external assurance's benefits - a five-fold increase.

But it is not only large listed companies that are harnessing assurance to add value to reports and performance management. Many unlisted companies, government and non-government organisations, for example the UK Ministry of Defence, Thames Water, Heathrow Airport, WWF and Royal Mail Group all used external assurance in their 2005 reports.

The current situation is that external assurance differentiates the best reporters from the rest and helps win the hearts and minds of stakeholders increasingly distrustful of corporate communications. However not all assurance is the same. The public expression of the assurance process is the assurance statement and it is here that good practice is most easy to spot. Sd3 recommends that, apart from opinion and recommendations, an assurance statement includes at least information on:

Purpose of assurance

Scope of review: a description of the actions performed

References to assurance criteria and frameworks used, for example the GRI guidelines or AA1000AS

Methods and procedures used in the engagement

Level of assurance

Statement of assuror independence

Competency of assurors.

Next time you open a CSR report; use this check list to test its mettle. However, to sound a note of caution. In one assurance statement investigated by Sd3; while all our pointers were covered, 58% of the statement was concerned with the assurors limitations on the statement. What remained after the description of the assurors methodology, was a mere 8% truly giving an opinion on the report.

For more information on Sd3's assurance offer click here.


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