Consultancy helps Home Office with CSR

NQC in Manchester has won a £400,000 contract with the Home Office to supply an online toolkit that will help it to assess the sustainability and responsibility of suppliers.

The company has invested £500,000 in developing CAESER, which stands for Corporate Assessment of Economic, Social and Environmental Responsibility, and the Home Office is the first to sign up to the programme, which it will implement nationally to demonstrate best practice.

NQC, which employs 30 staff, says the Home Office is just the first in a line of public sector organisations, including local authorities, police forces and other government departments, looking to implement the online survey because it helps organisations to self assess the impact that they are having on society and the environment, which can then be passed down the supply chain.

John Collington, Home Office group commercial director, said: “CAESER provides us with a framework to assess all of our suppliers and identify any areas of neglect, improvement or potential risk.

“We will rely on the buy-in and commitment from our suppliers in order for it to be implemented effectively; we want to see our suppliers taking such substantive steps to improve social and environmental impact.”

John F McClelland CBE, chairman of NQC, said: “Without a straightforward way for companies and organisations to assess their own economic, social and environmental impact, we realised that it would become impossible to formally measure the success of the campaign. CAESER has been developed to address this issue and with the backing of the Home Office and other government departments, we are confident that it will help encourage continuous improvement.

“The importance of the sustainability agenda has been growing for some time and it’s essential that we don’t lose sight of it during this economic downturn.”