Corporate social responsibility at HEFCE

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) for HEFCE means that we take account of the impacts of our activities on the environment, society and the economy.

Our CSR policy sets out our overall aims, key activities and targets in the areas of:‌

business ethics
managing our environmental impacts
procurement‌
our people
activity in the community
working with the sector.

HEFCE corporate social responsibility policy 2011-2015

Download the HEFCE CSR policy 11-15 as PDF (131 KB) | Download the HEFCE CSR policy 11-15 as MS Word (73 KB)

Our CSR activities include:

certification to ISO14001, an international environmental management system standard
achievement of the Carbon Trust Standard
publication of an annual CSR report (available to download below)
regular benchmarking. We have used Universities that Count to benchmark our performance. In 2009-10 we achieved the Gold standard with a score of 90.8 per cent, an improvement on our score of 84.7 per cent and Silver standard in the previous year. In 2010-11 our results compared well with a higher education sector average of 75.3 per cent and a corporate average of 86.1 per cent
a volunteering policy that enables our staff to flex their hours to undertake volunteer work
an annual CSR event for staff
we have adopted a sustainable procurement policy
our People Strategy, which articulates our overarching principles in relation to people management
our strategy for sustainable development in the HE sector.