AA1000 Assurance Standard launched
27th October 2008
On Friday October 24th 2008, AccountAbility launched the revised AA1000 Assurance Standard and AA1000 AccountAbility Principles Standard.
AA1000 AS is an international sustainability assurance standard that can be linked to other dominant business audit and assurance standards. Sustainability assurance provides a comprehensive way of holding an organisation to account for its management, performance and reporting on sustainability issues.
The launch marks the end of an extensive multi-stakeholder process involving consultation in 20 countries and participation from over 4,000 individuals from 90 countries via the web-based wiki process.
Keynote speakers included: Ernst Ligteringen, CEO, GRI; Kevin McKinley, Deputy Secretary General, ISO; Denise Esdon, Deputy Chair; IAASB.
LRQA sponsored this event the welcoming speech was delivered by Sandy Sutherland, Corporate Technical Manager, Lloyds Register Quality Assurance (LRQA) who said, “It is time to stock take and capture best practise as we’ve had 5yrs of continual learning and evolution in assurance techniques. We also need to draw on the growing volume of experience and practice.”
Sandy went on to say, “The standard starts to align the assurance process for financial and sustainability (CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility) assurance giving it the same amount of ‘respect’ at Board level.”
The AA1000 Assurance Standard was developed to ensure the credibility and quality of sustainability performance and reporting. It provides confidence to the market place even if some stakeholders are cynical about assurance they are generally open and responsive to companies having their activities independently checked. The standard will improve the process (es) transparency in as well as consistency of approach for assuring disclosures.
The standard also allows stakeholders to compare reports and opinions provided in assurance statements so that there is better clarity/understanding of the implications for sustainability. Providing a mechanism for producing reports which create value for both companies and their stakeholders as they deliver sufficient, relevant and credible information on sustainability performance to make informed decisions.
This standard is so important to the profession and the restructuring of the standard into separate but linked documents now gives:
- clear criteria for assurance providers
- guidance for reporters
- guidance for stakeholders using assurance statements
- informative annexes - This makes the standard and its documents much more relevant and useful for the actual user(s).
- Improved understanding and consistency of implementation - Therefore AA1000 AS’s aim of robust independent external assurance is ‘key’ to increasing the credibility and effectiveness of sustainability reporting and ultimately sustainability performance is achieved.