Chief Executive Statement
I am pleased to welcome you to our 2006/07 CSR report in which we set out our CSR performance for the last 12 months. During this period we have made significant progress in many areas as we continue to set ourselves new challenges. As our business continues to grow, especially with the proposed acquisition of Laidlaw International Inc, the communication and sharing of best practice in all areas of CSR will become increasingly important as it provides a foundation for our vision and values.
We seek to be the leader in safe, innovative, reliable and sustainable transport services adopting a local approach to transport solutions. As such safety is our number one priority. Our Injury Prevention Programme continues to help reduce the number of employee injuries, passenger injuries and collision rates in all our business divisions. We aim to further reduce injury levels in the coming year.
Global warming has been high on the agenda this year following the publication of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. This has reminded us all that we must act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As a public transport operator we have an important role to play in supporting emission reductions by encouraging modal shift, but we also want to lead the way in reducing our own emissions. To this end we have established both short-term and long-term reduction targets supported by a clear Climate Change Strategy.
We continue to invest in our people who are our most important asset. They are essential to achieving our goals of transforming travel and providing safe, high-quality, reliable services. All our operating companies have well-established learning and development programmes; some are industry-leading.
Where possible we seek not only to equip our people to do their job but also to help them improve their general education. A good example of this is our extensive UK network of lifelong learning centres. This year our UK Bus division won the national Rentokil Initial Skills for Life award at the 2006 Business in the Community (BITC) Awards in recognition of the centres' achievements.
As our business grows we face the challenge of communicating effectively with many employees spread across large geographical areas. Our central communications team has been expanded this year in order to improve both our internal and external communications and to embed our vision and values across the business.
In addition, we are working to build our community engagement activities. These are wide-ranging and largely locally driven. Our new Community Strategy gives a framework for our ongoing initiatives which will help us to enrich our community links and communication Group-wide.
Another exciting development this year has been the launch of the ftr vehicle which has taken to the streets in both York and Leeds. Our investment in the development of this new concept in road travel reflects our commitment to change the way people travel and feel about public transport. Our ongoing investment in improving the safety, quality and reliability of our services across the business continues to support growth in passenger numbers in the UK and contract retention and business growth in North America.
Our CSR journey continues and we will face challenges on the way. However, we have a well-developed management framework to manage these challenges. The framework keeps us abreast of developments and improves the increasingly important links between the UK operating companies and North America.