Our Responsibilites

Chief Executive's Statement

I am pleased that, despite the tough trading conditions that we faced, we maintained throughout 2009 our commitment to the various strands of our Corporate Responsibility programme.

It is also a testament to all our staff that we have been awarded the RoSPA Gold Medal for consistently improving health and safety standards over the previous five years. I am delighted that our sustained improvement has been recognised. This is the first time that a large newspaper printing and publishing group like ours has received such an award and all our staff can be proud of reaching this important milestone.

The statistics show that in 2009 we improved further. This is a remarkable achievement given the number of very significant office moves and the major press improvement and installation programmes undertaken.This statement is not meant to be just about awards but we put a high value on external assessment and recognition of our effort.

To that end our print sites have been working towards universal accreditation under the ISO 14001 Environmental Award and the OHSAS 18001 Health and Safety Award. We achieved our goal on the environmental standard with all sites now having reached the award level and have only one site still to gain the health and safety award. That site is anticipated to achieve the standard early in 2010. These standards bring with them the rigour required for external verification.

Our community engagement activities remain of great importance and I am particularly pleased by our continued involvement in the Catch 22 initiative described in the report that allows young people, whose backgrounds and qualifications might otherwise prevent them from taking the first steps in a media career, to experience work in a media company.

Sly Bailey
Chief Executive