British Telecommunications Plc Annual Report & Because of Its Inherent Limitations, Internal Control Over financial Form 20-F
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Annual Report & Form 20-F 2014 As a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc, British Telecommunications plc meets the conditions set forth in General Instruction (I)(1)(a) and (b) of Form 10-K as applied to reports on Form 20-F and is therefore filing this Form 20-F with the reduced disclosure format. BT is one of the world’s leading communications services companies, serving the needs of customers in the UK and in more than 170 countries worldwide. CONTENTS 2 The Strategic Report Purpose and strategy 2 Overview 2 Our purpose 2 Our strategy 4 Our strategic priorities Delivering our strategy 6 Our business model 7 Our people 8 Our assets and resources 11 How we measure our progress 11 Our lines of business 24 Human rights 25 Regulation 26 Our risks Performance 31 Group financial performance 36 Our performance as a responsible and sustainable business 38 Report of the directors Statutory information 41 Statement of directors’ responsibilities 42 Report of the independent auditors – Consolidated financial statements 44 Consolidated financial statements 49 Notes to the consolidated financial statements 94 Report of the independent auditors – Parent company financial statements 95 Parent company financial statements 111 Subsidiary undertakings 112 Additional information 119 Cross reference to Form 20-F This is the BT plc Annual Report for the year ended 31 March 2014. It complies with UK regulations and comprises part of the Annual Report on Form 20-F for the US Securities and Exchange Commission to meet US regulations. Please see the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements on page 113. In this document, references to ‘BT’, ‘BT plc’, ‘the group’, ‘the company’, ‘we’ or ‘our’ are to British Telecommunications plc and its subsidiaries and lines of business, its internal service unit, or any of them as the context may require. A reference to a year expressed as 2013/14 is to the financial year ended 31 March 2014 and a reference to a year expressed as 2014 is to the calendar year. This convention applies similarly to any reference to a previous or subsequent year. References to ‘this year’, ‘the year’ and ‘the current year’ are to the financial year ended 31 March 2014. References to ‘last year’ and the ‘prior year’ are to the financial year ended 31 March 2013. 2 The Strategic Report – Purpose and strategy THE STRATEGIC REPORT PURPOSE AND STRATEGY OVERVIEW These days, life and work is built around connectivity. Through us, British Telecommunications plc is the principal operating subsidiary of millions of individuals connect to friends and family, and have a BT Group plc. We are a wholly owned subsidiary of BT Group plc. The wealth of information and entertainment at their fingertips. BT Group plc Board has ultimate responsibility for the management of We believe that people want to work with a company that supports the group and the Operating Committee of BT Group plc is the key their ability to grow and is a positive force in the communities where management committee. It monitors the group’s financial, it operates. Whether it is by making connectivity accessible wherever operational and customer service performance and has cross- it is needed, helping our customers to become more energy-efficient business oversight of BT’s lines of business. It also reviews the group’s or looking for new ways to make healthcare or education more key risks and considers the potential threats and opportunities to the effective, we are committed to growing a successful business, by business. being valuable to our customers and society. And we are committed The Purpose and strategy, Delivering our strategy and Performance to delivering value to our shareholders. sections on pages 2 to 37 form the Strategic Report. OUR STRATEGY We present the audited consolidated financial statements on pages 44 Our strategy is based on three foundations which are supported by six to 93 and 111. strategic priorities. OUR PURPOSE Improving our customer service, transforming our cost base and Who we are investing in the future. These have been the foundations of our Our purpose is to use the power of communications to make a better strategy. They build on one another. The better we serve our world. By bringing together the best networks and technology with customers, the less time and money we need to spend putting things the expertise of our people, we make connections and create new right. The more we save through transforming our costs, the more we possibilities. can invest in giving customers what they need now and in the future. The world is being transformed by communications. BT is a Our strategy for the last four years has been about making ‘BT a communications company – and our purpose is to use the power of better business with a better future’. communications to make a better world. We are now a better business than we were and our strategy is Our heartland is the UK where we are the fabric of the national evolving. Our six strategic priorities that have served us well are infrastructure. But we are not just a UK company – we have also evolving. Being a responsible and sustainable business leader for operations that stretch around the globe. In the UK, we sell products example is now part of who we are and how we do things – not a and services to consumers and small and medium-sized enterprises standalone priority. Looking ahead, our focus is shifting more towards (SMEs). Around the world, as well as in the UK, we provide managed our goal of delivering sustainable, profitable revenue growth. To networked IT services to large multinational corporations, domestic achieve this we need to broaden and deepen our relationships with businesses and the public sector. We also sell wholesale telecoms consumers, businesses and public sector clients, increasing our services to CPs in the UK and internationally. relevance to them as markets and technologies change. Our systems deliver the intelligence of the modern world. By bringing The foundations of our strategy will remain largely the same – deliver together our networks, our technology and the hard work and superior customer service, transform our costs and invest for growth – expertise of our people, we develop services that our customers value. but the activities will shift as we enter the next phase of our journey. Our strategy We are committed to growing a successful business by being valuable to our customers and society, and to delivering value to our shareholders Customer Cost Investing service delivery transformation for the future Driving broadband-based consumer services The wholesaler of choice Being the ‘Brand for Business’ for UK SMEs The best network provider BT Global Services – a global leader A responsible and sustainable business leader The Strategic Report – Purpose and strategy 3 Customer service delivery our investment of around £450m in BT Sport and a £64m non-cash We have improved our customer service this year, but not by as much increase in the pensions operating charge. In aggregate, operating as we had wanted to. ‘Right First Time’ (RFT) is our key metric for costs and capital expenditure have reduced by around £5bn over the customer service improvement (see page 31). In practice, RFT means last five years. understanding what our customers need, keeping our promises to We have continued to focus on end-to-end (e2e) processes which them, keeping them informed, and acting quickly to fix things if they span our lines of business. The creation of a central team to go wrong. implement all e2e and complex programmes has improved our ability The RFT measure that we report for the year compares the average for to deliver them. Specific e2e programmes included: the fourth quarter with that for a year earlier. Our aim for the year was • moving all of our access circuit data records onto a single database to recover the 4% decline in RFT performance reported last year, but and making sure the data is accurate. Across our global network we we only achieved a 1.5% improvement. have moved access circuits onto more cost-effective solutions and Our service in the year was impacted by the widespread storms and improved the processes for circuit ceases and customer quotes; flooding across the UK which led to record levels of faults and meant • replicating the forensic approach we used in our UK businesses to that it took longer than normal to provide our services. In BT Global improve process efficiency, reduce cost of failure and improve Services, RFT did not increase by as much as planned, partly as a supplier value-for-money in Continental Europe; and result of a backlog of orders. We also saw a significant rise in demand • identifying a number of improvements to the way we deliver following the launch of BT Sport in August. This put pressure on our Ethernet services reducing provision time, and failures in the process. contact centre resources, which affected the levels of service some During the year we introduced the ‘Continuous Improvement’ (CI) customers received. initiative which we outlined in last year’s Annual Report. This gives Our strategy begins with customer service delivery, so we are our people the tools for team-based problem solving to improve the disappointed with any setbacks in our quality of service, whatever the processes around them. 7,000 full-time employees have now been reason. We received some bad press on customer service during the through a CI ‘wave’, which is typically a 12-week programme. Initial year and we did let some customers down. We apologised where we results have shown improvements in efficiency, customer service and had done so.