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The current Corporate Sustainable Responsibility (CSR) landscape is complex and multi-faceted. It is creating hundreds of initiatives, often with their own code or set of standards and principles, each offering guidance on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

When developing their own CSR approaches, businesses are guided by standards, principles, frameworks, conventions as well as legislation and regulations developed and formally agreed upon by governments. These are derived from standards set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), EU Green Deal and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Compliance

Q-Park has decided to use the OECD Guidelines and the UNGC Principles, these being two of the world’s foremost corporate sustainable responsibility reporting conventions and these both complement and reinforce each other in many ways. Furthermore, they can readily be used in conjunction with other instruments.

Explanatory materials have been developed to outline their relationship with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards.

Q-Park’s responsible business conduct is primarily based on one of the most broadly accepted definitions of sustainable development published by the former World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) in 1987.

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

CSR vision

Part of sustainable urban mobility

Q-Park stands for ‘Quality in parking’. This fundamental choice for quality forms the core of our vision on our corporate sustainability efforts. With our parking facilities and associated services for our parking customers, commercial and public partners, Q-Park wants to be an integral part of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) of cities. Regulated and paid parking, preferably in clean and safe facilities, offer an answer to current and future challenges posed by the urban environment. It is on these topics that we engage in dialogue with stakeholders.

Economy

The global population is still growing and urbanisation continues. This increasing economic activity also has consequences for the quality of life in urban areas. Cities have to contend with congestion, traffic searching for a place to park, reduced accessibility, air pollution, and unattractive and unsafe streets and squares which are full of parked cars. To prevent economic activity coming to a standstill, it is essential to develop and pursue an integral sustainable urban mobility plan (SUMP) together.

Mobility

Cities have to contend with limited space to facilitate mobility, while the number of cars continues to grow. Together with its partners, Q-Park is committed to a coherent mobility policy in which economic growth, quality of life, sustainable development, and environmental protection go hand in hand. A regulated parking and well-thought-out parking capacity management, as part of a sustainable urban mobility plan, helps to manage the growing mobility demand. A smart SUMP should also shift costs to the user and contributes to limiting unnecessary car use.

Good information provision about available parking spaces, pre-booking options and parking tariffs encourages smart mobility choices. Additionally, linking parking facilities to public transport, for instance, by creating sufficient parking spaces for those who continue their journey by public transport and by combining paid parking and public transport season tickets, also offers opportunities. Interoperable and digital mobility ecosystems which include parking facilities work in large cities as mobility machines.

The ideal parking tariff

Ideal parking tariffs are part of the mobility policy. They encourage motorists to look for economic alternatives, such as another means of transport (public transport or active mobility, such as walking or cycling) or to park away from the centre. Parking tariffs set by demand dynamics help to distribute parking spaces efficiently, so there is always sufficient space for those who want to pay to park in the inner city. Q-Park has extensive knowledge of this topic and advises city councils in this regard.

Attractive facilities

Parking facilities form a ‘reception area’. They are often the first impression a visitor gets of a city, shopping centre, station or hospital. And it's even better if parking facilities offer hospitality too, because it is an art to make them both functional and attractive. Q-Park is committed to operating parking facilities which are accessible and easy to find, available and easy to use, and which are also clean and safe and fit in with their surroundings.

Part of the attractive city

The user or the local authority pays for the facilities which are essential to an attractive, accessible and viable city. Parking is not an end in itself. It is the shops, cafés and restaurants, culture, nightlife, centres of education and good hospitals that attract people. Visitors want to park their car near their destination. For them, the price is less important than being able to park nearby. Currently, some cities are developing into magnets, and for these centres, offering free parking is not the solution.

Society

Parking facilities are more expensive yet more sustainable than on-street and open-air parking. Compared to the higher cost of construction, operation and maintenance, a car park contributes to people-friendly and high-quality public spaces.

Viable public space

A well-organised urban area offers ample public space. It encourages people to move around on foot, by bicycle or by public transport, which has a positive influence on their health and well-being. Q-Park is not in favour of unnecessary car usage, but promotes good parking facilities which function as nodes. Squares and streets change from traffic areas to places where people can move informally, safely and socially. In addition, a clean and safe parking facility seems to encourage responsible behaviour, not only in the facility but also in the surrounding area.

Jobs for practical people

As parking company, Q-Park offers interesting and attractive work for people who like to take a practical approach. Our Parking Hosts, Parking Attendants and call centre employees are the local face or the familiar voice of Q-Park. They have direct contact with the customer and make the difference for Q-Park. We ensure that our employees are well-trained and have customer focus. We also work on improving their resilience to aggression and violence, because that occurs from time to time.

Environment

Air quality

Paid parking helps reduce car usage in urban areas, and so also contributes to reducing CO₂ emissions and fossil fuel consumption. Smart traffic flows have a positive effect on air quality. Dynamic parking tariffs – higher during peak hours – can help to channel car usage.

Electric cars and shared vehicles

Customers can recharge their electric car in an increasing number of Q-Park parking facilities. Partners who offer Mobility as a Service (MaaS) concepts - car sharing, micro-mobility sharing, et cetera - can also use specially reserved parking spaces.

Own operating activities

Q-Park endeavours to improve the environmental performance of its own parking facilities, its fleet, and its offices.

CSR policy

For Q-Park, corporate sustainable responsibility (CSR) means being prepared to include financial, environmental, social and governance aspects in our strategy. But we go further, we actually incorporate these aspects in the decisions we make. Q-Park offers openness regarding the consequences of our actions for people, society and the environment. Our CSR focuses on sustainable development and performance within our chain: Q-Park as a whole, our financial stakeholders, our partners, each country in which we operate, our customers and society.

For Q-Park, complying with legislation and prevailing standards is a minimum requirement. In our view, CSR is exactly that which an organisation does of its own volition.

People, Planet, Profit

Through its CSR policy, Q-Park endeavours to achieve a balance between the three Ps of the Triple P principle: the economical (‘Profit’), societal (‘People’) and environmental (‘Planet’) consequences of its activities in the short and longer terms.

Here, we distinguish between indicators that Q-Park decides for itself, such as our own operating activities in the parking facilities we own, have in concession or long lease, and the indicators on which Q-Park can only exercise its influence.

Policy choices

Our CSR policy forms part of the long-term business plan. The policy choices we make are based on our own quality promise and our CSR vision. These are in line with developments in the European economy and the car parking market, and with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), EU Green Deal including CSRD and the TCFD, and ESG needs from financial markets.

Ambitions

Q-Park selects ambitions that fit in with our own strategy and that are applicable throughout the organisation. By defining specific goals and targets, critical success factors (CSFs) and performance indicators (PIs), we ensure that our performance can be compared from one year to the next. Only in this way can we take specific action and adjust direction where necessary.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders' opinions and expectations are essential input to Q-Park to evaluate and improve the quality and continuity of our services and operating activities. This is why we continually consult our country management teams, employees, urban mobility partners in the cities in which we operate, commercial and public partners, investors and shareholders and why we involve them in our activities.

In addition, for each specific project we decide with which relevant stakeholders we will enter into dialogue. Communicating with these stakeholders is also a good way to keep abreast of trends and developments, to share knowledge and experience, to build confidence, and to prevent or resolve issues.

Reporting

We answer legitimate questions and accept our accountability through our Annual CSR Reports. In this, we follow the guidelines given by the GRI Standards as well as the EU SDS and UN SDGs.

CSR governance

Responsibility for the CSR policy and its implementation lies with the executive board. Q-Park has a CSR committee which makes recommendations to the executive board concerning the CSR policy, including stakeholder involvement. The CEO chairs this committee.

The Head of CSR is responsible for keeping abreast of CSR developments, trends, rules and regulations as well as the process of gathering consistent and accurate data on time for the accountability of the policy. By providing interactive feedback to the countries and business units, the Head of CSR generates greater understanding of the performance indicators and greater involvement to improve overall performance.

The CEO and managing directors of the country organisations are responsible for the result-oriented execution of the policy.

The CSR committee endorses the principles of corporate governance with proper supervision and transparent reporting. The duties and responsibilities of its management are carefully defined in the Q-Park Governance Code. The rules applied by the legislator applicable to two-tier board companies are anchored in the articles of association.

CSR remuneration

Our CSR vision forms an integral part of our strategy and our core activities. We manage the organisation based on a balanced scorecard, which also includes the non-financial aspects, and this is linked to the remuneration policy. In this way, we ensure both financial and non-financial performance is correctly managed, which is important for the realisation of our overall strategic objectives. The remuneration system has been approved by the executive board and supervisory board.

CSR accounting framework

Contents and relevance

The Q-Park Annual CSR Reports provide information about the financial, environmental and societal value that Q-Park creates from the resources we use. The reports are intended for all our stakeholders: customers, employees, shareholders, banks and (financial) business partners, suppliers, governments, those living in the vicinity of our parking facilities, as well as societal organisations. We consolidate relevant information and show what Q-Park and and all its subsidiaries have achieved during the reporting year.

Material issues

We apply the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards, placing the materiality principle centre stage. To fully comply with GRI standards, we conduct a comprehensive external materiality analysis every three years.

Reporting process

At the end of each reporting year the Holding extracts most of the necessary CSR data from the back-office systems, the HRM dashboard and requests any remaining data from the country organisations. Using a specially developed and standardised data collection tool, the countries gather their data and check it before forwarding it to the Holding where it is subsequently consolidated and evaluated. The reporting process is standardised and the structure of the data requested can easily be checked for completeness and reliability. The whole process has already been prepared for future external verification.

External verification

External verification increases the confidence stakeholders have in our accountability. It has a disciplinary effect on our internal organisation, yet it also entails extra costs. Furthermore, it is essential we are confident that we have the right evidence and sufficient data maturity, which in itself places certain demands on an organisation of our size.

In Q-Park's current phase, the executive board wishes to focus on developing the company and our position in the market, requiring our full attention. The executive board has therefore decided not to apply for external assurance. We will, of course, continue to structure our reporting in accordance with the quality standards that stakeholders expect from us.

Online reporting

Digitisation is not only important in our primary processes, communication increasingly takes place online. For this reason, we publish our Annual CSR Report online. In our report we no longer provide the more 'static' information as we publish static and/or generic information on our corporate website. However, we do create links and referrals where applicable and appropriate.

CSR reporting principles

Report scope and boundary

Our Annual CSR Report concerns Q-Park BV and all group companies in so far as these are majority holdings. For details please refer to the financial Annual Report. The scope of the Annual CSR Report has been established based on the materiality analysis. The materiality matrix shows both the concerns of our stakeholders as well as the impact or influence of Q-Park on the various aspects.

We report on the elements on which we have direct influence and on which we have an impact. We do not report about issues on which we have no significant direct influence. One exception is made for the emissions within scope 3, of which the effects lie outside our organisation.

We primarily gather data from parking facilities which are owned, in concession or long-leased by Q-Park, because we can exercise the most influence. If we have measured our performance for a more limited portion of our facilities, this is explicitly stated.

When calculating the carbon footprint of our fleet we have included all our lease cars.

Reporting standards and testing criteria

We report according to the GRI standards and progress towards CSRD Compliance over the reporting year 2025.

Q-Park's policy is based on the EU SDS, ISO 26000 self-declaration, ICC Code, OECD Guidelines and UNGC Principles. For our energy consumption, our greenhouse gas emissions and our CO₂ calculations we use the GHG Protocol.

Data gathering and control

The data about non-financial performance is gathered annually from the countries in which we operate and the holding company. We also report quarterly on a selection of performance indicators. The questions and definitions were drawn up in 2010 in cooperation with external experts and since then have been further improved and adjusted. Where possible, corrections have also been made to data from previous years.

In addition, we have drawn up a manual with a clear explanation of our performance indicators and definitions, to avoid any misunderstanding.

To ensure the quality of the information, the reporting process is standardised and the data reporting structure is checked for completeness and reliability. For some parts of the models, such as data collection and the carbon footprint calculation, we have made use of experts' opinions and estimates. There is therefore a degree of inherent uncertainty to these calculations. The figures we report are the best possible estimates. We continue to improve our methodology as our insights continue to evolve.