Our approach to managing our business responsibly is guided by our corporate responsibility policy and is embedded throughout our company processes. This means managing our business in a way that enhances the positive and minimises the negative impacts of our activities.

There are many common aspects of our approach to corporate responsibility, and we benefit from access both to BAA expertise and our colleagues at other BAA airports. This offers us the opportunity to benefit from a broad range of knowledge and skills.

Elements of governance occur at a corporate wide level to ensure a consistent approach to corporate responsibility at the airports. BAA’s corporate responsibility and environment strategy team is responsible for overall co-ordination of our programme, including policy and strategy development, performance monitoring and assurance, and internal and external reporting.

BAA and airport corporate responsibility programmes are integrated with all other strands of our business activity and are supported by management systems that have long-term objectives and annual targets. We are exploring ways of further aligning our security, health and safety and environmental management systems.

In Scotland, our overall approach is to develop our environmental management systems in line with international standards (ISO 14001), but we are not currently preparing for formal certification. This is in line with our objective to use our resources in the most effective way – to focus on the performance outcomes expected by our stakeholders in preference to the diversion of effort into certification.

We have a comprehensive approach to risk management covering all aspects of risk to our business. The identification and management of environmental risks are a key part of this process. Risks include the potential for environmental non-compliance caused either directly by one of our airports or by a third party business partner. The actions to address these risks are integrated within our environmental programme and include the development and implementation of a suite of environmental performance standards.

We recognise that equipping employees with the right knowledge and skills is fundamental to fully integrating corporate responsibility into our business.

Training needs are initially identified through discussions between line managers and employees, and training is identified to support the requirements of the job and personal targets. There are a range of internal and external courses offered to managers to help them understand corporate responsibility issues.

Internal courses are available covering issues such as safety, security, cultural awareness and disability. Courses available include ‘Health and Safety Leadership for Senior Managers and Executives’ and ‘Environmental Awareness’.

Within BAA, senior managers need assurance that policies are being delivered and that we have an accurate assessment of our performance. Externally, our stakeholders need assurance that our reporting provides a comprehensive and accurate assessment of BAA and that it is addressing all of the material issues for the company. Our annual target-setting process and the scrutiny by independent auditors of our performance against those targets is a key part of that process.