The way we report reflects our commitment to communicating openly and engaging with our stakeholders about how we perform and our approach to corporate responsibility.

Our reporting structure

For the last three years we've published a corporate responsibility report. We want it to inform and stimulate our stakeholders about how we approach both our corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

As in previous reports, we deal with our activities and performance across four main areas:

• Marketplace
• Workplace
• Community
• Environment.
• Influences on our reporting structure

These areas reflect the reporting structure outlined by Business in the Community (BITC) in its Winning with Integrity report. The report was the result of a two-year, business-led taskforce and recommends a set of core sustainability indicators by which a company's impact on society can be measured.

Although we have structured our report using the BITC framework, we are aware of the influence increasingly exerted by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines 2002 are acknowledged to be the leading guidelines for creating an acceptable disclosure framework for sustainability reporting.

Without following the GRI 2002 Guidelines to the letter, we have tried to apply their principles to make sure our report is balanced and reflects both the nature of our organisation and the context in which it operates. We have followed the GRI guidance on report content and sustainability indicators.

This table shows the content of a 'sustainability report' as specified by the GRI Guidelines and the extent to which this has been met by our report. Links show where the information can be found.

Statement of assurance

For the first time, our report includes a statement of assurance. The assurance was provided by csrnetwork.