Sustainability is just good business sense. We continue to implement programmes which reduce costs and improve efficiency for our customers and other stakeholders, so ensuring the longevity of our operations.

Last year the question on many people’s lips was: would sustainability survive a major economic downturn? At Hammerson, our sustainability initiatives not only survived 2009, but made a major contribution to the business as we sought to both reduce costs and position ourselves to take advantage of opportunities as we emerged from the downturn.

Adhering to our long-held belief that sustainability is just good business sense, we continued to achieve long-term cost reductions for ourselves and our occupiers by implementing programmes which are focused on reducing energy and water use and increasing waste recycling across our portfolio. Our energy reductions also mean that Hammerson is relatively well placed ahead of the introduction of the Carbon Reduction Commitments Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRCEES) in the UK and the anticipated Carbon Tax in France. Our award-winning skills and training programmes benefit both unemployed people living near our shopping centres, who gain access to jobs, and our retailer customers, who do not suffer wage inflation as a result of local skills shortages. Further details of these major initiatives, and specific case studies, can be found in this report. We have two overarching commitments: to reduce costs for the benefit of our customers and shareholders and to be at the forefront of environmental and social sustainability to ensure the longevity of our business operations.

Over the past two years we have worked to demonstrate the value of this approach in our reporting. Our Connected Reporting Framework, introduced in 2008, helped us and our investors to evaluate the financial benefit of sustainability to the business. This year we have continued to develop this successful approach to reporting, improving the link between CR strategy and financial performance. We are also reporting for the second year using Global Reporting Initiative guidelines, to allow comparison with companies in other sectors. For specialist investors, we held our second Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) tour in London and, for the first time, Holland, and have used the feedback from these tours to compile this report. We will also be publishing our responses to investor questionnaires on our corporate website.

I have continued to work with industry bodies to develop a common approach to the problems we face. We worked with Business in the Community and several other industry bodies to create the Carbon Consensus, designed to provide a practical approach towards setting carbon targets for developments. I also chair the Green Property Alliance sub-working group on measurement and reporting. One of the less desirable consequences of the growth in interest in sustainability in recent years has been a proliferation of questionnaires: the GPA’s aim is to simplify reporting, establishing common metrics for the real estate industry which will reduce the number of individual surveys.