At the end of each year, the heads of our businesses and functions report to the Chief Executive on compliance with our Business Principles and standards, through annual assurance letters.
Shell Internal Audit investigates fraud and other control incidents. Ethical and legal incidents are reported to the Executive Committee and to the Audit Committee.
We also regularly audit our facilities’ HSSE management systems and have dedicated safety audits done by process safety specialists. All our major plants are required to be externally certified to international environmental standards, for example ISO 14001. In 2007, we put in place a team of independent, senior internal auditors – specialised in process safety – to check that standards are implemented across the company.
External panels and observers help us monitor environmental and social performance. These include community panels at a number of facilities that advise us on our social performance (see Our neighbours).
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