Our Community Responsibility

We want to be a good neighbour, and welcome in the communities in which we operate and we endeavour to do this in a number of different ways:

• Through our support for communities potentially impacted by our operations on issues of safety and the environment
• Through our support for our vulnerable and fuel-poor customers
• Through our heritage of support for our local communities
• Through our support for a national charity partner.

Our employees are central to the community investment programme. We want everyone to feel that they can make a difference. In 2004, 2,629 EDF Energy employees volunteered in their local communities through our programme Helping Hands, where we offer every employee two days of company time (per year) to get involved in the community.

In 2004, we invested £2.65 million in the community (assured by the LBG), which represents 1.27% of pre-tax profit. This included over £300,000 to our School Grounds Awards programme and £1.25 million to the EDF Energy Trust.

By the end of 2004, our employees had raised over £100,000 for our charity of the year NCH, with over £50,000 of that coming from our London-to-Paris sponsored bike ride. This money was then matched pound for pound for EDF Energy. Some other key successes were the increased participation in the staff satisfaction surveys, thanks to a donation mechanism introduced for the first time (£1 was donated to NCH for every completed survey), and the introduction of a structured community module in the experienced and senior managers' programme.

Our successes were recognised with two prestigious BITC Big Tick awards for our School Grounds Awards and for our partnership with the Castle View Education Action Zone, as well as by numerous local community awards across the company.

Our aims for 2005 are:

• to review where our current community activities add value to our ambitions and to develop a company wide community strategy
• to raise £200,000 for our new charity of the year: Mencap (www.mencap.org.uk).