Our responsibility

This is a good time to be a building society

This Corporate Responsibility (CR) report demonstrates much of what Chelsea stands for and is intended to give anyone interested in us a real insight into how we behave as a successful building society in the 21st century. It explains what we do and shows how we've moved on since our last report.

You'll see how we've moved forward our work on Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) and how we've grown our environmental programme. You'll see the successes we've made in reducing our energy consumption and note the massive 192 tonnes of CO₂ emissions we plan to save this year simply by better management of our PCs!

No-one foresaw the crisis we had to face in the summer of 2007 when flooding isolated much of Gloucestershire and cut off the mains water supply to our head office. You'll see how we coped with that unprecedented situation, maintained business as usual and supported our staff, customers and the local community throughout.

Helping the communities where we operate has always been an important feature of the way we do business. This has not changed. Our community section reflects the work we've been doing and highlights the charity of the year chosen by our staff - Winston's Wish (a charity that helps bereaved children).

Since our last report we've achieved accreditation under the Ethical Company Organisation award scheme. This involved assessment by an independent panel using information available in the public domain, not information we provided direct to the assessors.

We believe that the way we do business is important. So important, that we've established this dedicated website (www.chelseacares.co.uk) to keep people informed about how we're progressing against our goals. Chelsea is in great shape to cope with the economic climate. I hope after reading this report you will agree.

Richard Hornbrook
Director and Chief Executive
August 2008

Board commentary

I am proud to be both a member of Chelsea Building Society and a Director on its Board because I know that Chelsea takes Corporate Responsibility seriously and genuinely strives to embed it into its way of working 'as business as usual'. I have no doubt that this helps us continue to develop a strong, sustainable business combining sound business principles with respect for our members, our employees, our environment and the communities within which we work.

We very much value the views of our members and other stakeholders so please take the opportunity to give us feedback and get involved!

Jean Irvine
Non Executive Director