Community assurance statement

The Corporate Citizenship Company has been commissioned to provide assurance of the community involvement section of O2 plc's corporate responsibility report 2005 (pages 35-37). Our approach was based on the principles of the AA1000 Assurance Standard, relating to materiality, completeness and responsiveness. Our work included independently consulting a sample of O2's community partners, using benchmarking techniques to assess comparative practice by other companies, checking the validity of key facts and assertions in the report, and reviewing community contributions data against the evaluation principles of LBG (London Benchmarking Group - managed by us on behalf of its 100 corporate members).

In our opinion, the report provides a fair and balanced representation of O2's community involvement activities. In particular, community partners attest to the quality of their relationships with the Company and the responsiveness it displays. We have found that the LBG evaluation principles have been correctly and consistently applied, with an effective Group-wide system for recording and reporting contributions. From our benchmark work, we believe O2's programme is notable for the clarity of its overall objectives and for its focus on the special contribution the business can make through its products and services.

Going forward, we believe an opportunity exists for O2 to use this clear focus to show the community and business benefits that are being achieved, by putting in place systematic measures of outputs and longer term impacts. With the growing emphasis on employee engagement, greater resources are being committed to the programme, both corporate and personal, and new possibilities are opening up for enhanced results.

The Corporate Citizenship Company