Specsavers

La Villiaze

St Andrew’s

Guernsey

Channel Islands

GY6 8YP

Tel +44 (0)207 2020 241

specsavers.com

Printed on recycled paper

CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

REPORT 2013 - 2014

I am delighted to introduce Specsavers’

third corporate responsibility report, which

describes the progress that has been made

over the past year in terms of supporting

our local communities, trading ethically and

protecting our environment. It also sets out

our plans for the year ahead.

Corporate responsibility continues to be an

integral part of our values as the Specsavers

Partnership, just as it has been for the past 30

years since Specsavers was founded with the

vision of providing best value eyecare to everyone.

I hope you find the report useful and

interesting and welcome your feedback.

Please email gg.cr@specsavers.com.

Paul Fussey

Chief Financial Officer

Chair of the Specsavers Corporate

Responsibility Steering Group

Introduction

Tradingethically

Our position

Our progress

Our plans16

Contents

Supportingour local communities

Our position

Our progress

Our plans4

Protectingourenvironment

Our position

Our progress

Our plans22

Our position

At the Specsavers Partnership, we believe in

citizenship. We are passionate about giving back

to and working with our local communities,

wherever we operate in the world, as a supporter

of local and national causes. We are also committed

to supporting eyecare and hearing care projects

in developing countries.

We believe that it is our corporate responsibility

to pay the amount of tax legally due in the country

in which that liability arises and to comply with the

applicable rules and regulations in each country in

which we operate.

We recognise that tax payments make a vital

contribution to sustaining social welfare and

the government funding of policies that help

people avoid economic and physical hardship.

Last year, more than £60m of tax was paid

on profits generated by Specsavers businesses to

governments in countries in which we operate.

In addition, we generate and collect

a number of other taxes such as employee

and sales taxes. In 2013-14, the total amount

contributed to tax authorities around the world

as a consequence of Specsavers’ commercial

activities exceeded £430m.

Our stores provide employment for more than

26,000 local people, in whom our partners invest

with regular training and development, enabling

them to progress through Specsavers on their

chosen career path. The same is true for the

4,000 people who are employed in our support

offices and manufacturing and distribution

sites around the world.

In the past 12 months, we have raised

over £2 million across the world for

charities and good causes.

Supportingour localcommunities

04 / 05

'We are committed to supporting eyecare and hearing care projects in developing countries.'

Supporting our local communitiesOur progress

In 2013/14:

The United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland

• Our stores and support offices raised more than

£682,000 for various local charities and good

causes, including the Movember appeal, the

Lincs and Notts Air Ambulance, the Hampshire

Air Ambulance and Specsavers Children’s Charity.

• We opened two more outreach vision centres

in Zambia to add to the six already opened

through our long-standing partnership with

Vision Aid Overseas (VAO). We worked with VAO

to help make the vision centres self-sufficient,

contributing £156,000 to this end. Our stores

also donated more than a million pairs of

glasses for use in Zambia.

• We raised £260,000 to train 25 puppies for

Guide Dogs for the Blind in the UK, exceeding

our target pledge.

• In Ireland, we supported Irish Guide Dogs for the

Blind as well as a wide range of local charities.

• We sponsored road safety charity Brake and

handed out more than 50,000 high-visibility

vests to schoolchildren.

• Through our annual Spectacle Wearer of the Year

competition, we supported anti-bullying charity

Kidscape, raising £35,000 to help give confidence

back to bullied children.

• We continued to support Hearing Dogs for

Deaf People, sponsoring their annual awards

and raising £20,000 to train new dogs.

• We collected hundreds of unwanted hearing

aids for the hearing charity Sound Seekers,

who are dedicated to helping deaf people,

particularly children, in the poorest communities

of the developing world.

• Dame Mary and Doug Perkins, the founders

of Specsavers, donated £523,000 to various

national and international charities, including

building a new school in Haiti, supporting orphans

of AIDS victims in Tanzania through the Tumaini

Fund, sponsoring the Homeless World Cup,

the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme and

Vision Care for Homeless People.

• Almost 400 people in our support offices spent

time on local community or charitable work,

under our ‘Giving back to our local communities’

policy. This included street collections for the

Framework charity in Nottingham, building

and drainage work at UK Youth’s Avon Tyrrell

Outdoor Activity Centre in the New Forest,

building a pigpen for the Stonebridge City Farm

in Nottingham, gardening and redecorating at

Autism Hampshire in Southampton and beach

cleaning and clearing noxious weeds from the

cliff paths in Guernsey.

Store staff in Kidderminster raise money for Sport Relief

06 / 07

The Netherlands

• The Stichting Specsavers Steunt raised the record

amount of €421,800 (£349,200) for 218 local charities

in the Netherlands, almost double what was raised

in previous years. Country director Julie Perkins

handed donations to two charities, while 70 stores

followed her example by donating the money

during personal visits.

• We launched ‘Win a famous ambassador for

a day’, with 60 charities entering the competition.

The four successful ones were each visited by

a Dutch celebrity, who took part in activities such

as painting a clubhouse, playing football with

children and phoning local organisations to ask

for financial support.

• We organised volunteer days in October where

store teams helped out at their local charity. Each

store appointed an ambassador as the first point

of contact for their local charities.

• Once again, we supported Veteranendag

(Veterans’ Day), which recognises the courage

of Dutch war veterans. White carnations, the

national symbol of appreciation for veterans,

were handed out in stores and, on the day, we

offered the veterans hearing tests and provided

our customers with discounted tickets to the

marine museum.

Australia and New Zealand

• Since launching our Australia and New Zealand

community programme in September 2013,

our stores have raised AUD 380,000 (£211,400)

for a range of local charities, including the

Fred Hollows Foundation, which aims to

prevent avoidable blindness.

In March 2013, we launched the first

Community Programme for our support

offices in Melbourne, Australia and Auckland,

New Zealand. This includes:

• Workplace Giving, where employees donate

to a nominated charity from their pre-tax salary

through the payroll system and Specsavers

matches the donations up to a maximum of

AUD 30,000 (£17,000) or NZD 30,000 (£16,000)

a year. The charities supported are the Fred

Hollows Foundation, the RSPCA, the Red Cross,

Cancer Council Australia and the Starlight

Children’s Foundation.

• Specsavers Grants, where staff can apply for

a grant of AUD 1,000 (£560) or NZD 1,000 (£520)

for a cause for which they have personally raised

the same amount.

• Corporate Volunteering, where staff give time

to environmental conservation projects, prepare

food for the homeless with FareShare and carry

out building, painting and cleaning work with

the Lighthouse Foundation.

Supporting our local communitiesOur progress

08 / 09

Netherlands country director Julie Perkins visits a bird

shelter in Naarden which has benefited from donations

24 / 25

Across the Nordics, we gave an incredible amount of support to develop eyecare in Tanzania.

• Danish stores collected 20,000 pairs of glasses

for the Louis Nielsen project and arranged seven

week-long eye camps in Tanzania, providing eye

tests and glasses to 8,000 people. We also teamed

up with the international organisation SOS Children's

Villages, providing eye tests and glasses for people

in two villages and raising DKK 10,000 (£1,100).

• Stores in Finland collected more than 7,000 pairs

of glasses for the Tanzania project. The Finnish

Spectacle Wearer of the Year joined us on a visit to

Arusha, to the SOS Children’s Village, accompanied

by a journalist from ET magazine and a video

reporter from daily newspaper Iltalehti. Stores in

Norway also donated glasses.

• Swedish stores collected more than 6,000 pairs

of glasses from customers and provided eye tests

and glasses to around 1,000 people at an eye

camp in Dar es Salaam. The donors are able to tag

their contact information to the glasses and can

find out more about the recipient, once a match

has been found.

10 / 11

Supporting our local communitiesThe Nordic countries

Denmark

• Louis Nielsen sponsored Søren Grotum, the

first blind man to do the Team Rynkeby charity

bicycle race from Denmark to Paris for the Danish

Children’s Cancer Foundation. Our stores also

donated DKK 15,000 (£1,700) for Danish children

with cancer.

• Stores in Aarhus raised DKK 10,000 (£1,100) to

buy food and presents for underprivileged families

to help them celebrate Christmas.

Norway

• We provided eye tests and glasses to homeless

people in Kristiansand and Lillestrøm.

• In collaboration with Trygg Trafikk (Safe Traffic),

we gave high visibility vests to young children

in schools in Mo i Rana and Bodø.

• We provided free sight tests to people in Oslo

central railway station on World Sight Day.

Sweden

• We began a new collaboration with SOS

Children’s Villages and collected more than

6,000 pairs of glasses during a three-week

fund-raising campaign.

• Stores also sold SOS Children’s Villages

bracelets and raised over SEK 19,000 (£1,700)

for a kindergarten in Mozambique.

• Almost SEK 72,000 (£6,500) was raised by

Specsavershanden, a group of volunteers at our

office in Gothenburg, for youngsters in need.

Spain

• All eight stores collected glasses for the Lions

Club charity and raised over €4,000 (£3,300).

• We donated glasses to the EMAÚS charity,

which improves conditions for the homeless.

Hong Kong

• Our Hong Kong office donated 10,000 frames to

two charities which help people in the developing

world: the Crossroads Foundation and the

Eyeglass Vision Friendly Foundation.

Manufacturing and distribution

• Vision Labs in Kidderminster launched a Community

Matters initiative for staff to contribute to the overall

wellbeing of the neighbourhood. More than 55

volunteer days have been donated to local schools,

supporting children with their reading and craft

skills, taking part in cookery classes, redecorating

sports halls and canteens and clearing an overgrown

section of one school’s grounds to create an outdoor

learning environment.

• Staff at Airways Optical manufacturing lab in

Southampton donated toys worth over £1,000

to radio station Wave 105’s Mission Christmas

for disadvantaged children and helped out in

the warehouse to sort and box the toys that

Finland

• Specsavers Optikko donated 1,000 pairs

of glasses to the Veterans of War.

had been donated. They also donated food and

a trolley to the Manna Food Bank in Staines and

to the Southampton City Mission’s Basics Bank,

for people who are feeling the effects of poverty.

They raised £1,200 for the Countess Mountbatten

House palliative care service to help furnish a

therapy room in its day centre. And they donated

IT equipment for the UK-based charity,

IT Schools Africa.

• Aston Labs employees held monthly fund-raising

events to generate more than £12,000 for charities

in the Birmingham area.

• Staff at the Hi-Spec Lenses warehouse in

Kidderminster baked cakes to raise £120 for

Macmillan Cancer Support.

12 / 13

'We support and encourage as many staff as possible to be involved in good causes.'

The team at the Szatmár Optikai manufacturing and glazing

site in Hungary deliver food to underprivileged families

In 2014/15 the Specsavers Partnership will:

In the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland

• Support Guide Dogs for the Blind, Vision Aid

Overseas, Blind Veterans UK and Hearing Dogs

for Deaf People. Stores will continue to support

local charities and initiatives in their area.

• Collect unwanted hearing aids on behalf

of Sound Seekers to help with their work

in the developing world.

• Donate £1 from every Spectacle Wearer of the

Year entry to anti-bullying charity Kidscape.

• Sponsor Road Safety Week in November. Our stores

are expected to donate more than 75,000 high-

visibility vests to primary school children, to help

make sure they are seen more clearly in the dark.

• Support and encourage as many staff as possible

to become involved in good causes through our

‘Giving back to our local communities’ policy.

• Open the ninth and final clinic in Zambia,

ensuring eyecare is provided throughout the

country, and support these clinics to become

sustainable and self-supporting.

In Ireland

• Support the renovation of the eye clinic at Our

Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, through store

fund-raising and with €1 from every Spectacle

Wearer of the Year entry.

In Australia and New Zealand

• Celebrate the six month and one year milestones

of the Specsavers Community Programme and

support even more local organisations.

• Launch a limited edition Fred Hollows frame,

with AUD 25 (£14) from each frame sold going

to the Fred Hollows Foundation.

In the Netherlands

• Raise at least €350,000 (£290,000) for Stichting

Specsavers Steunt in the Netherlands and do more

to inform our customers about what the donation

they make really means in their community. We will

continue our regular Stichting volunteer days and

donation visits.

• Support one local charity for each of our 118 stores

and one overall national charity - Nationaal Fonds

Kinderhulp (National Help for Children Fund).

• Start a project with Nationaal Fonds Kinderhulp

to donate clothing and glasses to hundreds of

children who are disadvantaged financially or

who experience difficult home situations.

• Inform and motivate our store ambassadors

and use our ‘Giving back to our local communities’

policy to support and encourage staff involvement

in good causes.

• Support Dutch veterans on Veterans’ Day.

In the Nordic countries

• Continue work in Sweden for SOS Children's

Villages, extending the glasses collection period.

• A team from Norway will visit Peru and

Tanzania to provide sight tests and glasses

to impoverished people.

In Spain

• We will continue to help charities across Spain,

including the Red Cross and ONCE, the lottery

charity for blind people and those who are

visually impaired.

Manufacturing and distribution

• Continue with fund-raising and local community

support initiatives at all our manufacturing and

distribution sites around the world.

Supporting our local communitiesOur plans

14 / 15

Store ambassador Danny Simons from Roermond

volunteers with a Dutch scout group

14 / 15

Members of the finance shared service centre

paint a communal TV room for Nottingham

charity Framework which tackles the causes

and consequences of homelessness

Our position

We work to ensure safe and

healthy workplaces for the

people who make our products,

where human and civil rights are

respected. We also require

our suppliers to take the

necessary steps to protect the

environment. We are committed

to our global ethical trading

policy and ensure regular,

independent audits of all our

major suppliers outside Europe.

Tradingethically

All those in Europe already

operate within globally recognised

regulatory environments. Wherever

possible we develop meaningful,

long-term relationships with our

suppliers, so that we can work

together towards our vision of

providing best value eyecare

and hearing care to everyone.

16 / 17

In 2013/14:

• Our global, external auditor company carried out

66 supplier audits, of which half were on social

and half on environmental issues.

• Of the 33 suppliers that have been visited, 25

are frame manufacturers, two are laboratories,

five make optical instruments and the other one

makes furniture for our stores.

• Sixteen of the external audits were

of new suppliers.

• All of the audited companies were found to

comply with the Specsavers supplier code of

practice (p21).

Trading ethicallyOur progress

Trading ethicallyOur plans

In 2014/15 the Specsavers Partnership will:

• Follow up previous audits and assist our supply

chain partners in improving the social and

environmental impact of their businesses.

• Undertake new audits of our major

non-European suppliers.

• Five companies had a low score on social audit

issues, such as inconsistent record keeping, and

eight on environmental audit issues, such as the

storage of waste. A corrective action plan was

agreed with each supplier and kept under regular

review. All the suppliers committed to improve

and work towards best practice.

• In addition to the external audits, the Specsavers

supply chain team continued to visit regularly and

monitor the performance and environment of all

our suppliers.

• Raise awareness among our staff of our global

ethical trading policy and of our anti-bribery

and corruption policy, which set out their

responsibilities when dealing with suppliers.

'Specsavers continually strives to develop and promote high standards of social and environmental responsibility.'

18 / 19

20 / 21

Specsavers continually strives to develop and promote high standards of

social and environmental responsibility. Since 2008, Specsavers suppliers

and their subcontractors have been required to operate in accordance with

our code of practice:

Obey all applicable laws

Commit to act in accordance with all the relevant laws, regulations

and industry standards in the countries in which suppliers operate.

Treat people with dignity and respect

Adopt the following best practices that promote healthy and

safe workplaces, where human and civil rights are respected.

1 Employment is freely chosen

2 Freedom of association and the right to collective

bargaining are respected

3 Working conditions are safe and hygienic

4 Child labour is not used

5 Living wages are paid

6 Working hours are not excessive

7 No discrimination is practised

8 Regular employment is provided

9 No harsh or inhumane treatment is allowed

Protect the environment

Recognise global and environmental responsibilities and take all

commercially reasonable steps to safeguard the environment.

Specsavers suppliers must be prepared to work towards:

1 Complying with environmental legislation and regulations and

with standards such as ISO 14000

2 Committing to actions to restore and preserve the environment

3 Committing to reducing waste and pollutants, conserving resources

and recycling materials at every stage of the product life cycle

whenever possible

4 Developing and apply technologies for minimising pollutant emissions

5 Continually assessing the impact of their products on the environment

and the communities in which each lives and operates

Trading ethicallyThe Specsavers supplier code of practice

18 / 19

Our position

We are committed to taking

steps to ensure we operate our

businesses in a sustainable way,

understanding the impact that

we have on our environment.

As a successful and growing

business, this means making

sure our operations are efficient

in the resources we consume,

minimising waste wherever

practical. This needs to be done

in a way that is consistent with

our values, the responsibilities

we have to our customers and

our people and our obligations in

the various countries in which we

do business.

Every part of our business

consumes energy and, in

recognising the importance of

the climate change debate, we

are making it our primary goal to

reduce the CO2 emissions relating

to our energy use across our

whole business.

Protectingourenvironment

22 / 23

In 2013/14:

• More than 650 stores in the UK and Ireland

signed up to using energy from renewable

sources, mainly wind farm generation.

• We have entered into Climate Change Agreements

for some of our manufacturing sites in the UK.

• We carried out energy surveys at manufacturing

sites and stores.

• Our energy consultants worked with our

store partners on opportunities to reduce

carbon output.

• Store guides have been produced to help focus

on where further energy savings can be made.

• We began a trial of energy-efficient

lighting for our stores.

Protecting our environmentOur progress

24 / 25

'Our primary goal is to reduce the CO2 emissions relating to our energy use across our whole business.'

24 / 25

The purchase of more video conferencing units in each of our

offices is promoted as a good and viable alternative to travelling

Our support offices have continued to work on

carbon reduction. We held low carbon workshops

which have led to the following initiatives:

• Data centre – we installed cold aisle containment

and estimate there will be a reduction in emissions

of 54.5 tCO2 (tonnes of carbon dioxide) per year.

• Multifunction printing devices have been

trialled and will be rolled out across our offices

in Guernsey and the UK. This will see the number

of printers drop by more than 100 and we estimate

there will be a reduction in emissions

of 32 tCO2 per year.

• Work is underway to investigate the use of

combined heat and power in our Guernsey

office. We estimate there will be a reduction

in emissions of 8.3 tCO2 per annum.

• Energy-efficient lighting is currently being

trialled in our Guernsey offices. If successful,

we estimate there will be a reduction in

emissions of 29.2 tCO2 per annum.

• Further reducing our carbon output through

better control of lighting, heating, ventilation

and other building systems at our offices.

26 / 27

Protecting our environmentOur progress

In addition to this:

• A waste-to-water food digester has been

purchased to remove all soft organic food going

into the waste stream. This will see the waste

being turned into grey waste water.

• Our newly formed green teams reviewed

recycling at our main offices in the UK and

Guernsey and introduced new facilities in prime

locations throughout the offices. We ran an

awareness campaign and introduced desktop

recyclers to support the recycling initiatives.

Airways Optical in Southampton, which surfaces 50,000 lenses and coats 20,000 lenses a week, has had a focus on the environment over the past few years.

• Four years ago all waste went to landfill. Now all

general waste is incinerated for energy generation,

while 25% of waste materials are recycled.

• All wooden pallets, clean cardboard, plastic

containers, scrap metal and WEEE (waste from

electric and electronic equipment) are recycled.

• We have continued to review ways of shipping

freight from our suppliers and in the last year this

has increased to over 70% of shipments being

made by sea.

• The Danish support office in Aalborg set

up a green group to work on environmental

initiatives, such as recycling and energy saving.

Its first initiative was to establish a paper

recycling system.

• We carried out environmental audits

of 33 of our major suppliers.

Protecting our environmentSustainable manufacturing and distribution

Lens Online

Our distribution centre for stock lenses

and contact lenses, based in Kidderminster,

installed a second compactor in 2013, enabling

all incoming cardboard waste to be recycled

(more than 60 tonnes a year). A small

compactor was also installed to recycle shrink-

wrap polythene – around five tonnes in 2013.

• The site has undergone a major lighting

replacement programme, replacing old,

inefficient fluorescent tubes with modern

LED fittings. This has resulted in an 80-85%

saving on lighting costs.

• Even the picnic tables used by staff outside the

building are made from recycled plastic bottles.

A state-of-the-art water-handling plant for production

means a trade effluent account is no longer required

In 2014/15 the Specsavers Partnership will:

• Appoint our first Environmental Manager to

give full-time focus to further developing our

environmental programme.

• Continue to increase the percentage

of energy used by our UK offices and

manufacturing sites, which has been

sourced from renewable supplies.

• Review our energy use at major locations

internationally, extend our reporting and

explore options that will help us to reduce

energy consumption.

• Work with our partners in a number of our UK

stores to explore and cost practical solutions for

reducing energy usage in store. These solutions

can then be offered to other partners.

• Extend the use of technologies

successfully implemented in the

Protecting our environmentOur plans

UK to all our businesses globally.

• Continue to investigate the most effective solution

for recycling water used in our in-store labs.

• Further develop a waste reduction and

recycling programme in our Guernsey and

UK offices and roll this out to other major

locations. Explore options for improving

waste management in our stores.

• Continue to switch from air freight

to sea freight wherever possible.

• Carry out environmental

audits of our suppliers.

• Identify other areas of environmental

impact for attention.

A waste-to-water food digester will reduce the annual

amount of waste going into Guernsey's landfill