Corporate Social Responsibility

Pictured: Monte Carlo, Oceana, Brighton

As a listed business, which is also the leader in its field, we are fully aware of the effect our operations may have on the communities in which we operate. Accordingly, we recognise our responsibilities towards our customers, employees, investors and other stakeholders, and appreciate the benefits of operating in an ethical and responsible way.

With the ever increasing focus on CSR, we are aware that companies that operate to a high ethical standard are becoming more attractive to investors. We also strongly believe that ethically minded companies that care about the future are likely to be more determined to succeed and prosper. We are therefore proud and delighted to announce that we have very recently been added as a new member of the FTSE4Good index; a clear demonstration that we take our responsibilities in this area extremely seriously.

This year sees Luminar celebrate its 21st birthday and ever since it was formed, we have faced challenges from economic, social and legislative changes. We have seen each change as a new opportunity for our business and thanks to the efforts of our Directors and employees, who are the most experienced operational management in our industry, we have been able to maintain our position as the leading operator in our sector.

Since 2007, we have produced each year a separate Corporate Social Responsibility (“CSR”) Report and this is published on our website located at www.luminar.co.uk/investors. Set out below is a brief summary of that report.

CSR and our venues

As far as CSR is concerned we categorise our business in two ways. The first relates to our venues and the second to the events or ‘sessions’, which we stage in those venues.

Our main branded venues are Oceana, Liquid and Lava & Ignite. Our product brands include ‘Big Night Out’, Vibe, Red Carpet Moments and UK Club Culture (“UKCC”).

Over the last year we have invested £36.4m in re-branding, renovating and maintaining our units, which lead their market and in many cases dominate their town or city. As part of this investment we have taken measures to ensure better accessibility to our venues. For example, in many cases we have installed low-level bars that allow ease of access for wheelchair users and assist us in complying with the Disability Discrimination legislation.

In building and refurbishing our venues we have accommodated the requirements of a variety of different legislation or regulation. this includes part l2 of the building regulations 2006, which states that new buildings must be tested for airtightness and requires architects, engineers and contractors to create a more sustainable built environment.

Our customers should enjoy a fun, safe night out. We strive to achieve the highest level of safety within our venues by investing in the best possible security and procedures.

We have evaluated the implications for our new developments and adjusted our procedures to focus on energy usage and thermal efficiency. For example, although we install a high percentage of LED lighting, many areas are also fitted with low energy lighting. Equally, our heating and ventilation systems are installed with improved controls that will in turn improve the overall efficiency of our units. Wherever refurbishments are planned, we either apply a new approach on energy or introduce a phased replacement of our existing systems. We also continually evaluate the use of cheaper man-made materials and/or those materials that can be obtained from renewable resources.

Smoking

The smoking ban was brought into force in England on 1 July 2007. We have welcomed this legislation and addressed our trading procedures accordingly. We used our experiences in Scotland and Wales to prepare fully for this change and spent approximately £5m so that we now have designated smoking terraces across the vast majority of our estate.

Creating Safer Venues

All venues that undergo refurbishment receive an upgrade to their CCTV system. This is intended to protect our venues, our employees and our customers. These systems are linked to the intruder alarm and operate 24 hours a day. This prevents individuals, such as those who have been refused admission for reasons of inappropriate conduct, or after being detected with illegal substances on their person, from gaining entry to the premises. In addition, all our venues have at least one mobile ‘headcam’ system in use, which provides additional support to the fixed CCTV systems and helps us to record incidents that occur outside of the coverage of those fixed systems. Last year, Luminar invested over £2.7m in intruder alarms, ‘headcams’, metal detection and CCTV record and capture equipment.

Lite Patrol

We are extremely conscious that since our venues can accommodate many customers, incidents or hazards may occur. To monitor these incidents and ensure that they are reported and resolved or cleared up as soon as possible we utilise a safety system known as ‘Lite Patrol’. This system enables reports to be made at each venue and downloaded to a centralised system where software evaluates the data so that accurate ‘Incident Reports’ can be produced.

Health and Safety

We recognise that the health and safety of our customers, employees, contractors and local communities is critical to our success and so, in order to promote the highest standards of safety throughout our business, we ensure that all our employees undergo appropriate training. Our Head of Safety and his team conduct ongoing reviews of all our policies and procedures and work with our Training Department to ensure that the training delivered to our employees is relevant, up to date and follows best practice. Further to this, all of our venues are audited by our Safety Advisor, who provides valuable support to all of our operational staff with respect to safety matters.

Polycarbonates

During the period 2002 to 2007, the number of non-fatal injuries to members of the public reported by the services industry increased by 39% (source www.hse.gov.uk). In response to this, we introduced polycarbonate plastic into some of our venues on a trial basis. These trials were so successful that we undertook to introduce polycarbonates across all our venues.

In our 2007/8 CSR report we noted an overwhelming reduction in the number of incidents and injuries involving glass following the introduction of polycarbonate plastic to our licensed premises when the number of recorded incidents involving broken glass was reduced by 43% in the year to January 2008 compared to the previous year.

In the year to January 2009, the number of recorded glass-related incidents has reduced a further 32%.

Licensing

In order to be able to sell alcohol and stage certain activities in our venues, we need to obtain the correct permissions or ‘licences’ from the relevant authorities. Obtaining and keeping these licences is essential for our business and so it is of the utmost importance for us to monitor all relevant licensing legislation vigilantly.

The licensing of bars and clubs in England and Wales is now governed by the Licensing Act (2003) (the “Act”), which took effect in November 2005. This Act sets out four licensing objectives, which are: protecting children from harm; preventing crime and disorder; preventing public nuisance; and maintaining public safety. We fully understand the importance of these objectives and so we embrace them in all in our operations. We continually seek to enhance these licences by applying for variations and better conditions under which to trade. We also operate venues in Scotland and the Channels Islands and are aware of the variations in their licensing legislation. We monitor and respond regularly to their requirements so that our business complies properly with all developments.

CSR and our customers' experience

Although providing leading venues is one aspect that allows us to ensure that our customers can enjoy themselves in a safe and secure environment, we recognise that there are other elements that contribute to an enjoyable night out. One of these is our customers themselves and so they are rightly placed at the heart of our business. Attracting and retaining customers is one of the key ingredients of our success. The majority of our customers are 18 to 24 year-olds and they want to enjoy themselves in safe and comfortable surroundings. We constantly strive to anticipate their changing demands by evolving and redesigning our venues so that they can accommodate our suite of products that have been developed to meet our customers’ aspirations for the best in entertainment and service.

Dancesafe

While we make every effort to ensure the safety and welfare of our customers and staff within our premises, we also encourage our customers to take a level of responsibility for themselves. We display signage about customer and staff welfare which advises them of certain risks which they could be exposed to. We call this ‘Dancesafe’ and these signs and policies deal with matters such as responsible drinking and getting home safely at the end of an evening out.

Customer Security

To ensure the safety of our customers we employ the services of third party door stewarding companies whose staff look after their welfare both inside and outside our venues. Their staff are trained to be pro-active in: recognising potential incidents, identifying vulnerable individuals and providing assistance where necessary. Outside, they are responsible for issues such as preventing weapons or illegal substances being taken into the venue and they achieve this by the undertaking of random searches on customers. Inside, the door stewards are responsible for ensuring effective queue management and the controlled dispersal of customers at the end of an evening’s trading. These measures are designed to control behaviour and minimise disruption to residents. Getting this right every night we trade is a top priority as it limits any negative impact our operations might have on their surrounding communities.

The provision of door security is now a licensed and regulated industry. The legal responsibility for the licensing of Door Supervisors rests with the Security Industry Authority (“SIA”), which was established by the Private Security Industry Act 2001. The conduct of Door Supervisors is also regulated by British Standard BS7960 and it is this which we have used to form the basis of our own ‘Service Level Standards’ and ‘Incident Management Protocols’. We constantly review and developthese Standards to further improve security in our venues. We believe this approach enables us to continue to drive forward the highest standards of excellence in the security industry.

Customer Service and Satisfaction

Providing great service for our customers starts with our employees and we train them to achieve the highest standards in this regard. It is our policy to provide each new employee with the necessary training to enable them to deliver the highest levels of customer service and to ensure these levels are maintained throughout our business, we survey our customers to ensure we fully understand what they want and that we are able to deliver this. We monitor the performance of our employees in providing great customer service through means of league tables and reward incentives. We have also enlisted the services of ‘Retail Eyes’, which is a customer service, research, development and evaluation agency. We have established the ‘Beyond Hello’ programme, which helps us gather customer feedback, learn from it and adapt our products to ensure we remain at the forefront of our industry.

Customer Relations

Although we recognise that our customers visit us to enjoy themselves within our venues, there may occasionally be times when they do not feel totally satisfied and wish to make us aware of their concerns. We take all such customer issues extremely seriously and pride ourselves on the prompt and efficient manner in which they are addressed. We investigate all incidents within a timely period and resolve them wherever possible to the complete satisfaction of the customer. We keep records of these incidents and often take remedial action to address the causes of dissatisfaction and so prevent any recurrence. Overall complaint levels are monitored and trends are recorded to identify where additional investigation and consequently curative attention is required.

Pictured:Tahiti bar, Oceana, Swansea 

Leading on social issues

Binge drinking and responsible retailing

We recognise that alcohol misuse and binge drinking are important issues, not just for our industry as they threaten to compromise the well-being of our customers, but also for society at large. Our employees are well positioned to influence the attitudes and behaviours of customers and are therefore trained to identify those who they consider might exceed a safe and responsible alcoholic intake. Where they deem it appropriate, they will refuse to serve any customer whom they consider has consumed enough.

Under-age drinking and misuse of identification

Under-age drinking regrettably remains a major issue within our society and we continually take steps to prevent under-age persons from entering our premises. The ‘Challenge 21’ scheme, whereby any person who appears under this age is asked to produce identification as proof of age, has proved extremely effective and we will continue to stringently enforce this policy. If the identification presented appears to have been tampered with, the individual presenting it will be refused entry and excluded from the venue. In certain cases the police may be called and they may issue ‘on the spot’ fines, depending on local agreements with the authorities.

The Next Generation

Although under-age drinking may remain a problem for our society, we recognise that teenagers still wish to go out to nightclubs as this remains one of the experiences you cannot recreate at home. To respond to this demand we have created UK Club Culture or “UKCC”, which provides the opportunity for them to enjoy music and dancing in our venues without having access to alcohol or other illegal substances. UKCC provides a credible clubbing experience for teenagers between the ages of 13 to 17. When staging UKCC events, which are usually held during the school holidays, we work closely with local Police and Licensing Authorities to ensure a safe and friendly environment. UKCC events help to keep youngsters off the streets by giving them an opportunity to enjoy themselves sensibly in our exciting venues. UKCC events operate within a well-established framework that has clearly defined policies and procedures. These include strict policies for admissions and child protection. For example, we ensure that there is a ‘Designated Child Protection Officer’ at all UKCC events and carry out Criminal Records Bureau checks on all employees working at them.

Our People

The biggest investment we make is in our employees because we know that the success of our business is the responsibility of every individual who works for our Company. Nearly 4,000 employees currently work at Luminar, the majority of whom are part-time ‘crew’ members. We believe that it is essential to provide an enjoyable, healthy and safe working environment to ensure that our employees are able to perform at their optimum in what is a highly demanding and fast-moving workplace.

We strive to ensure our employees feel appreciated and motivated and we support them in all aspects of training and development. To this end, we have introduced four key values that encapsulate the work environment we wish to achieve. We encourage our workforce to adopt these principles and be more: passionate: participative; professional; and principled. By promoting these key drivers of performance we can instill in our teams the desire to be the very best at everything we do.

We strongly believe in promotion from within and career progression is available to all who join the Company. We have launched our Crew Development Programme (“CDP”) which covers all aspects of the late night entertainment sector from operations, management, licensing legislation and health and safety, all the way through to the marketing, promoting and the staging of an actual event. The CDP demonstrates Luminar’s continued commitment in investing in our people. It also offers clear benefits in allowing us to present well-trained, competent and motivated crew that have the skills necessary to carry out their jobs to a consistent high standard.

We continue the emphasis placed on the training and development of our employees through our Foundation Degree, which is validated by Nottingham Trent University. This programme is in its fourth year and enables the employee to embark upon a career path and also to link into the academic system and gain a highly regarded qualification, which is recognised worldwide.

We estimate that around 100 managers will graduate this year before enrolling on to the next stage of the course, which is the top-up Degree. This is a bespoke programme in Late Night Entertainment in Leadership and Management and is again validated by Nottingham Trent University. As the programme is subject to the usual funding mechanisms for Higher Education, there is no cost to those who wish to enrol onto it. The programme was introduced during 2008/9 and will allow our managers to gain a BA (Hons) degree.

Pictured: Foundation degree in Leadership and Management — January 2009 graduation of 101 support managers

Diversity

Whilst understanding the need for strong leadership and a strong team ethic, we are also aware that individuality is a key component of a great workforce. We embrace such diversity and believe that it inspires a versatile and creative thought process throughout the business. At the time of writing the report 49% of our workforce is female and 51% is male.

Noise at Work

It is a legal obligation on all employers to ensure the health, safety and welfare of its employees and this now includes ensuring that they are not exposed to levels of noise which could damage their hearing. Therefore, in preparation for the new Noise at Work Regulations that took effect on the entertainment industry on 6 April 2008, we have successfully trained all employees on the impact of this legislation. Personal Protective Equipment (“PPE”), in the form of ear plugs, has been provided for all employees and we are looking to implement a health surveillance programme to assess and monitor the effect of noise on them.

Charitable Activities

The Echo Trust

To ensure we are able to contribute to the communities in which we operate, Luminar established its own charity, the Echo Trust, in 2002. Echo’s main aim is to benefit children’s charities across the UK and since it was established, it has raised a huge amount of money for children’s projects. More recently, during the year a total of £367,178 (2008: £238,602) was donated to Echo by our customers and staff. This money was raised from collections within venues and donations made at Company organised events.

The main fund-raising event of the year was the Christmas 'Give a Kid a Quid’ campaign which encouraged customers to simply donate £1. This raised a staggering £133,694 (2008: £118,364) during a two-week period from 12 December 2008 to 1 January 2009.

A number of charities that will benefit from the latest grants including: Whittington Babies (Neo Natal Intensive Care Unit at the Whittington Hospital), £8,680; The Mark Anthony Memorial Trust, £8,500; and Wallace and Gromit Grand Appeal Bristol £11,831.

Additional information on our charity, including fuller details of many of the organisations that have received grants from it, can be found at www.echottrust.org.

Other Charitable Events

In addition to our venues that support local charities within their local communities, a large number of our employees also take part in charitable activities that are unconnected to their work at Luminar. They have recently participated in events such as: the London Marathon 2009; ‘Race for Life’ in aid of Cancer Research; and the ‘Moon Walk’ on behalf of Breast Cancer Care. We are extremely proud of them for their commitment in giving up their free time to support these worthwhile causes.

Business Relationships

Luminar is a significant business within the entertainment industry and we enter into valuable contracts with our suppliers. In running our business it is important that we deal ethically with our suppliers and partners and we expect the same in return.

Our Purchasing Team endeavours to develop mutually beneficial long-term relationships with reliable suppliers for goods and services who satisfy our requirements in a timely, efficient and cost-effective manner. We also expect our suppliers to apply a high ethical approach in their dealings with Luminar and their own suppliers.

The Purchasing Team also sets objectives and targets with our suppliers to ensure that we can continually meet these high standards. These include: a structured project plan targeting the high spend areas; improved supplier assessment and contract monitoring procedures; auditable files which easily map the processes we conduct; and revision of the Luminar purchasing policy, including the introduction of a hospitality register.

The Environment

Luminar strives to minimise any adverse effects its activities may have on the environment and we have taken various measures to ensure this continues. We have set ourselves stretching targets to ensure that we pro-actively monitor, manage and minimise such effects.

We place our environmental strategy as a high priority in all areas of our business and consider our targets when engaging in new contracts. These targets reflect our view on ‘green’ issues and our commitment to growing our business in an environmentally friendly manner.

As part of this strategy, we aim to: comply with all environmental legal requirements and regulations; monitor and quantify the environmental impact on our business; define objectives and set improvement targets; promote awareness of relevant environmental issues amongst employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders; and verify and publish information on environmental performance.

We have focused specifically on improving our performance in regard to: waste; Company vehicles; water; and energy management. We monitor our targets carefully and full details of the targets have achieved during the past year are set out in our full CSR report located on our website referred to above.

The Future

We appreciate that operating in an ethical and socially responsible way is crucial for our business and we hope that this CSR section sets out a clear view of the philosophies that underpin our daily activities. We are proud of what we have achieved in the last 21 years but we know that none of this would have been possible without the tireless efforts of our people who deliver consistently excellent service on a daily basis. They are the best trained and most experienced operators in the late night sector. We rightly credit them with our success and remain confident that we can continue to grow our business in the future. To meet these challenges we aim to introduce new initiatives in 2009/10, such as undertaking work to map our carbon footprint so that we can develop better strategies to offset our carbon emissions.