Our corporate responsibility strategy

"In these challenging economic times, our commitment to being a responsible retailer remains just as relevant. We continue to seek out opportunities across the business to create shared value – a meaningful benefit for society that is also valuable to our customers and our business."

Across our operations and activities we:

• Actively seek ways to minimise our impact on the environment in the way we do business
• Help our customers to be responsible consumers by giving them information and choices
• Behave ethically and with integrity when sourcing products and dealing with our suppliers
• Provide our colleagues with a safe and healthy environment and enable them to act responsibly in their jobs and to develop rewarding careers
• Support the local and national communities in which we operate

"With trading conditions likely to remain tough, we see no conflict between corporate responsibility (CR) and good business practice. It is more important than ever that we maintain a relationship of trust with our customers, and provide our colleagues with a working environment where they can contribute to the long-term success of our business, but also to the sustainability of the wider environment and communities in which we operate.

And of course, the efficiency benefits we have achieved as a result of our CR actions are helping to keep prices as low as possible across all our product ranges."

This strategy is supported by the objectives and targets we set ourselves at the beginning of each year. These can be found in the relevant sections of this report or you can read a summary in our ‘Performance against objectives’ section.