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• Checks of the balance and accuracy of sampled qualitative performance information
(such as performance claims), through interviews and document review;
• Visits to Stockland’s headquarters in Sydney, New South Wales and eight Stockland
sites: Balgowlah and Merrylands, New South Wales, North Lakes and Waterfront Place,
Queensland, Gowanbrae and Highlands, Victoria, 2 Victoria Avenue and Settlers Hills/
Baldivis, Western Australia;
• An independent check of Stockland’s material issues and stakeholder views on
these issues, including analysis of peer reports, media articles on Stockland in FY10,
Stockland’s own documentation and engagement records and issues identified from
Banarra’s interviews;
• A review of the Report to check that it appropriately communicates the nature
and extent of Stockland’s adherence to the AA1000APS Principles; and
• A review of the Report to check consistency with the GRI application level requirements.
Findings and Recommendations
Banarra’s findings and recommendations in relation to Stockland’s adherence to the
AA1000APS Principles, the reliability of the reported performance information and
adherence to the GRI requirements are provided below.
Assurance Opinion: AA1000APS Principles
We believe Stockland has appropriately communicated the nature and extent of its
adherence to the AA1000APS Principles in the Report.
Inclusivity – has Stockland engaged with its stakeholders?
Stockland’s CR&S Strategy commits the organisation to being responsive to the interests
of stakeholders and key stakeholder issues are escalated to Board level. Employees across
the organisation are comfortable identifying their stakeholders and the importance of upfront
engagement is widely acknowledged. Stakeholder Engagement Plans are now in place
across all projects, including Retirement Living, and these have been updated to include
conflicting issues between stakeholder groups as per our recommendation from last year.
Banarra identified the following areas for improvement:
• Stakeholder Engagement Plans are seen primarily as documenting current engagement
approaches, especially on existing projects – they could do more to drive improvements
in practice;
• We are not aware of any formal mechanisms for assessing and building the capacity of
stakeholders with additional needs to engage with Stockland – doing this would ensure
all key stakeholder groups are heard; and
• Retirement Living measures its residents’ satisfaction on an annual basis – the
Residential and Commercial business units could also implement longer term customer
satisfaction mechanisms, something which we note Residential plans to progress
in FY11.
Materiality – has Stockland identified its most important sustainability issues?
The CR&S team and business units have a comprehensive process for identifying
Stockland’s material issues, which now includes a broader range of internal and external
stakeholder views. Stockland’s materiality process identified 14 overarching issues for 2010.
Banarra’s process found evidence to support the materiality of the majority of these issues.
Our testing also identified a further four additional issues as being material: responsible
design & development, corporate strategy & growth, employee remuneration and
leadership. Stockland has acknowledged all these issues in the Report, with the exception
of the impact of leadership changes during the reporting year.
The CR&S team has engaged with the risk and strategy teams to identify material issues
and there are plans for a joint workshop next year. We believe Stockland should take this
further and formally incorporate the materiality process into business planning across
the organisation.
Banarra identified the following areas for improvement:
• In FY10 Stockland focused its understanding and strategic response to climate
change risks and opportunities on the immediate physical risks of climate change for
Residential – it would be beneficial to assess a fuller scope of risks and opportunities
across all areas of the business and engage with customers and partners on this
issue; and
• The Report contains numerous performance indicators, however in some cases
there is minimal or no commentary discussing the results (such as women in
leadership positions and in Residential management) – data analysis could be
applied more consistently so that Stockland is in a stronger position to communicate
its understanding in the Report.
Responsiveness – has Stockland responded to these issues?
There is general agreement that CR&S is well resourced in Stockland. Stockland has
responses relating to all of its material issues and the corporate CR&S Strategy is now
supported by Business Unit CR&S strategies along with those from other parts of the
business, such as Human Resources. At the site level there is now greater awareness of the
corporate CR&S strategies, policies and tools.
Banarra found only limited involvement of stakeholders in developing responses and as
such our recommendation from last year to better integrate stakeholder feedback into
decision-making stands. We also recommended that Stockland ensures its accounting
for performance is clear and concise and that there are quantifiable targets for all material
issues, however many of the future commitments in the Report are given in broad terms,
making it challenging for stakeholders to assess the response and the progress made.
Stockland has again voluntarily piloted the Property Council of Australia’s draft Guide to
Corporate Responsibility Reporting in the Property Sector and we are pleased that it has
responded to our recommendation last year to start to report on land with high biodiversity
value lost to development. There are opportunities for Residential and Retirement Living to
develop more meaningful and comparable environmental metrics in other areas, such as
energy and water efficiency. There are also opportunities for reporting on sustainable supply
chain management performance.
Stockland Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Report June 2010
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