Strategy and resource allocation
- Materiality
- Strategic focus and future orientation
Key observations:
Within The Crown Estate’s first Integrated Report a connected and comprehensive insight into the company’s material issues is provided. The section is opened with a personal introduction from a member of the company’s Management Board who clearly acknowledges the importance of integrating sustainability matters into the core of the business.
The approach taken by The Crown Estate is then discussed, providing the reader with a clear sense of the criteria which has been used to determine those material issues. Placed in the context of helping the business to focus the company’s time on the issues which really matter and which drive business growth. Each of the 14 material issues are subsequently outlined. For each, The Crown Estate uses an icon to identify whether the matter is an ‘operating essential’, ‘differentiator’ or ‘enabler’ which sets the context for the relative importance of each issue. An explanation of what the issue is about, a summary of what the business is doing to manage this issue, with the clear identification of the KPIs which are used to measure performance, provides the reader with a succinct insight into the material matters. These spreads are followed by a more detailed discussion of the KPIs with performance data and forward-looking targets provided for each one.
The overall effect of including this information is that the reader has a clear understanding of what the material issues are, how they are being managed and the measures which the business is using to monitor those issues which could materially impact the sustainability of the business.