Savills recognises corporate responsibility as an integral part of being a successful business and maintaining a positive reputation and brand.

Key highlights in 2008:

• People – Established a common set of global Savills Values formalising our pride in our commitment to ethical, professional, responsible conduct and reinforcing the behaviour we expect from our staff.
• Clients – Established an Energy and Environment business group to provide a focal point for our sustainability related services and a ‘one stop shop’ for our clients.
• Environment – Directly reduced the impact of our operations on the environment through practical, on the ground, initiatives.
• Community – Implemented a focused community engagement programme – coordinating our support for local and national charitable groups for the first time. Selected two ‘charities of choice’ in the UK – Honeypot and Land Aid.

The challenging markets we experienced during 2008 have reinforced howour continued success is dependent upon our reputation, brand and strength of relationship with a variety of internal and external stakeholders. In 2007 we identified the benefit of improved corporate responsibility as including:

• being better able to retain and recruit the best people by meeting the expectations and values of current and future staff;
• being able to retain and attract clients by listening to their changing needs and developing new and innovative services; and
• by supporting and enhancing the Savills brand globally through promoting ethical and responsible attitudes.

We feel that the importance of these benefits to the Group has increased during 2008 and the progress we are now making in embedding corporate responsibility in to our day-to-day operations reflects this.

We continue to be a member of FTSE4Good, which measures the performance of companies that meet globally recognised corporate responsibility standards. Our inclusion further highlights our commitment to long-term corporate responsibility.

For more information regarding our progress in this field, please refer to our Report and Accounts 2008 .