Corporate social responsibility

As a public sector organisation with a range of key stakeholders, we aim to behave in a socially responsible way. 'Corporate social responsibility', in this context, means that we take account of the impact our work has on the economy, society and the environment.

Our corporate, social responsibility (CSR) policy sets out our overall aims, objectives and targets in this area. It covers operations at our offices, as well as the influence we have on the sector through our policies and services. It meets our commitments to CSR set out in the enabling excellence theme of our strategic plan. We published our first CSR policy in January 2006.

Corporate social responsibility policy 2008-14

[ Download HEFCE corporate social responsibility policy 2008-14 as Adobe PDF 16K | Download HEFCE corporate social responsibility policy 2008-14 as MS Word 84K ]

Our CSR action plan sets out key actions planned until March 2012 designed to achieve the objectives and targets set out in our CSR policy.

Corporate social responsibility action plan

[ Download Corporate social responsibility action plan as Adobe PDF 41K | MS Word 56K ]

We are certified to ISO 14001, an international environmental management system standard and have achieved the Carbon Trust Standard.

Corporate social responsibility report

We review our performance every year and publish an annual corporate social responsibility report. This document reports progress against our corporate social responsibility policy and targets. The report includes our latest and historic environmental performance indicators.

Benchmarking

We use Universities that Count to benchmark our performance. This uses Business in the Community's environment and corporate responsibility indices to assess the extent to which environmental and social issues are integrated into an organisation's strategy, practices and performance.

In 2009-10 we achieved the Gold standard with a score of 90.8 per cent, an improvement on our score of 84.7 per cent and Silver standard in the previous year. Our results this year compare well with a higher education sector average of 75.3 per cent and a corporate average of 86.1 per cent.

HEFCE corporate responsibility index feedback report 2009-10

[ Download HEFCE corporate responsibility index feedback report 2009-10 as Adobe PDF 438K ]

HEFCE corporate responsibility index feedback report 2008-09

[ Download HEFCE corporate responsibility index feedback report 2008-09 as Adobe PDF 334K ]

Further information

For further information about corporate social responsibility contact Joanna Simpson, tel 0117 931 7411, e-mail j.simpson@hefce.ac.uk.

Last updated 20 August 2010