prelims was set up in January 2003 as informal working group of publishers to explore whether as an industry it would be sensible to agree to work to a common social accountability standard, in line with the principles set out in the UN Global Compact on the Responsibilities of Business.

The reason for this was an increasing awareness that retailers and distributors were demanding suppliers to conform to a range of social accountability codes, and we were being asked to ensure our own suppliers were meeting these different standards. This was causing confusion and additional burden on our suppliers.

After much discussion we agreed that:

• most of the existing standards shared the same fundamental principles; and

• it was not fair that suppliers were being asked to undergo audits against several of these.

We decided, therefore, that we would:

• agree on a single set of standards to be applied across all our suppliers; and

• that we would share audit information with each other to ensure none of our suppliers would be expected to undergo more than one audit by a prelims member.

Up until 2010, the set of standards that we asked our suppliers to adhere to was the ICTI Care Process. There were a number of reasons for this:

• we did not want to re-invent the wheel and write yet another set of standards;and

• as an informal group, we decided it would be more efficient for us to work with an already established set-up that related closely to our industry, like ICTI.

However, over time, we realised that there was a need amongst the members to develop a process that we could use more globally to reflect our changing supplier base.