Paul Pindar, Chief Executive 

Welcome to our corporate responsibility report for 2010.

In today's economic climate our skills are more relevant than ever. Both public and private sectors have to reconcile their need to curb costs with society's continuing demand for better service delivery. We continue to demonstrate that these are not mutually exclusive goals: cost reduction can go hand in hand with service improvement and customer choice.

We've made good progress over the past year across all of our social and economic impact areas. In particular we've continued to develop our equality and diversity programme and our environmental initiatives, including the expansion of our energy reduction programme. We've continued to invest in developing the skills of our people and benefitting our local communities through our volunteering programme.

I am pleased with what we have achieved to date, but recognise we have further to go. We remain committed to creating and maintaining a sustainable business capable of delivering positive social impacts across all our local and wider communities. Sustainability is a moving target, as external conditions and society's expectations will always be evolving. In 2010, we continued to engage with our stakeholders, listening to their feedback and using their input to develop our sustainability strategy further.

Our sustainability Steering Group provides valuable challenge - ensuring our sustainability strategy is aligned with our business principles and values, and helping to embed it and ensure our strategy is converted into positive actions throughout our business. To take this further we are setting up an additional Sustainability Committee that includes external representatives who can bring different perspectives and help develop our sustainability strategy further.

Our live online report enables us to provide regular updates throughout the year and allows you to select the information that meets your further needs. Please let us know your views as your feedback is hugely important to us.

I hope you enjoy reading about our activities and I look forward to updating you on our progress in 2011.

Paul Pindar
Chief Executive
01/04/2011