Growth through transformation

Previous page  |  Next page

Our wider responsibilities
We are privileged to play a role in the wider communities of which we are a part and we recognize that an innovative approach to managing social, ethical and environmental issues is good business in every sense.  

Increasingly, we have to demonstrate social and environmental responsibility when bidding for new business – in the 2005 financial year, bids to the value of £2.2 billion required us to demonstrate expertise in managing these issues.

We commit a minimum of 0.5% of our UK pre-tax profits directly to activities in support of society – we provided over £9 million in the 2005 financial year. In addition, BT operations provided a further £12 million in funding and support in kind.

The focus of our community programmes is on the big issues where better communications can make a real difference. That’s why we’ve been sponsoring a drama-based education programme – to date, more than two million children have had the chance to enhance their communications skills – and why we’re supporting children’s charity ChildLine in its drive to ensure that every child’s call for help is answered.

And we’re committed to minimizing any adverse impact on the environment. During the year, we signed the world’s largest green energy contract, which means that almost all our future UK electricity needs will be met from environmentally friendly sources, including wind generation, solar, wave and hydroelectric schemes. This is expected to reduce our carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions by around 325,000 tonnes a year.

We played a role in the response to the Asian tsunami of 26 December 2004. We set up a live call centre to handle the response to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s (DEC) appeal and ran the online donation facility.

Individual employees were also involved in fundraising and 16 BT engineers travelled to the affected area to help re-establish the telecommunications infrastructure. We also made an immediate donation of £500,000.

Digital inclusion is a key public policy issue and we are working with the UK Government and the voluntary sector to find effective ways of using communications technology to tackle social exclusion. We are, for example, actively involved in the EverybodyOnline programme – established in partnership with charity campaign group Citizens Online – which aims to increase skills and access to communications technology in deprived communities.

Our Age and Disability Action team promotes equal access to a wide range of products and services, including large-button phones, cordless and hands-free options and a spoken text service.