External assurance
The overall objective of the external assurance process is to enhance the transparency and accountability of Rio Tinto's performance on social and environment issues by providing assurance that the material in the Sustainable development review is relevant, complete, accurate, and responsive to stakeholder expectations, and that, in particular, Rio Tinto's policies and programmes are reflected in implementation activities at operations. This assurance process for the content of our annual Sustainable development review included seeking comments from external opinion formers on the terms of reference.
Rio Tinto initiated its first external assurance programme in 2001. ERM has subsequently undertaken external assurance of Rio Tinto's review programme for the period 2003 - 2005. As part of this process ERM and Rio Tinto developed a set of guiding criteria to ensure that there would be no conflict of interest between ERM's assurance activities and other work undertaken for Rio Tinto by ERM.
For the period 1997 to 2001, the verification of data was undertaken by Arthur D Little (ADL). ICF Consulting undertook the data verification in 2002.
In 2003 ERM was appointed to undertake the data verification exercise as part of the overall assurance programme. The scope of work required review of the processes used to generate the data and the interpretations of them that are presented in the Sustainable development review, with the objective of verifying:
- the quality of data submitted by the operations;
- the accuracy of the consolidated data in the Group reports;
- the relevance of the reported data; and
- the extent to which the data support claims made in the Sustainable development review.
In 2005, in addition to providing assurance on the Sustainable development review, ERM assessed the adequacy of the annual Internal Control Questionnaire.
ERM's fees for assurance and verification in 2005 were £265,408.
What were their methodologies and conclusions?
We believe that it is important to learn from our assurance and verification activities. The recommendations made by ERM in the 2004 Sustainable development review have been assessed, and actions taken during 2005 to address them. What action has been taken on the 2004 recommendations?
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