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Responsibility

We believe operating responsibly is essential to the way we conduct our operations, invest, develop our people and manage our relationships. It underpins everything we do.

We always strive to operate to the highest standards of corporate governance and we believe in strong business ethics, based around our Framework for Responsible Business and our core values of respecting others and valuing diversity, demonstrating integrity and openness in all relationships, taking ownership for driving performance and operating as one team.

Our corporate responsibility performance is reported in line with our corporate responsibility reporting principles.

We continue to enjoy external recognition of our responsible business approach. We remain on the Dow Jones Sustainability World and FTSE4Good indices and once again have been rated as a ‘platinum’ company in the Business in the Community 2007 corporate responsibility index, confirming that our approach to responsible business is world-class.

In March 2007, we published our Standards of Ethical Business Conduct that replaced our UK Code of Business Conduct, and in December 2007, following the completion of the KeySpan acquisition, these Standards also replaced the US Standards of Conduct, thereby providing a single set of standards throughout National Grid. The new standards provide a common set of practical guidelines to help ensure that our behaviours are lawful, we comply with our policies and licences and we follow the values set out in our Framework for Responsible Business and our core values. In 2007/08, there were 11.6 substantiated breaches per 1,000 employees compared with 8.0 in 2006/07 and 4.8 in 2005/06. Offences include such things as fraud, internet and email abuse, drugs and alcohol abuse and misuse of company vehicles and other assets. Disciplinary actions can range from a verbal warning to dismissal.

In our 2008 employee engagement survey, which included for the first time employees who joined us on the acquisition of KeySpan, 61% (2006: 65%) of respondents considered something would be done if they reported an inappropriate business practice or an ethical issue, while 47% (2006: 65%) believed National Grid is a good company for customers to do business with.

Our approach to corporate governance and business ethics is described in more detail in the Corporate Governance section.