The Directors are responsible for preparing the Annual Report and the financial statements. The Directors are required to prepare financial statements for the Group in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and have also elected to prepare financial statements for the Company in accordance with IFRS. Company law requires the Directors to prepare such financial statements in accordance with IFRS, the Companies Act 1985 and Article 4 of the IAS Regulation.

International Accounting Standard 1 requires that financial statements present fairly for each year the company’s financial position, financial performance and cash flows. This requires the faithful representation of the effects of transactions, other events and conditions in accordance with the definitions and recognition criteria for assets, liabilities, income and expenses set out in the International Accounting Standards Board’s ‘Framework for the Preparation and Presentation of Financial Statements’. In virtually all circumstances, a fair presentation will be achieved by compliance with all applicable International Financial Reporting Standards.

Directors are also required to:

  • properly select and apply accounting policies;
  • present information, including accounting policies, in a manner that provides relevant, reliable, comparable and understandable information; and
  • provide additional disclosures when compliance with the specific requirements in IFRS is insufficient to enable users to understand the impact of particular transactions, other events and conditions on the entity’s financial position and financial performance.

The Directors are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the Company, for safeguarding the assets, for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities and for the preparation of a Directors’ report and Directors’ remuneration report and operating and financial review which comply with the requirements of the Companies Act 1985.

The directors are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the company’s website.

Legislation in the United Kingdom governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.

Cautionary statement

This Annual Report and Accounts has been prepared solely to provide additional information to shareholders to assess the Group’s strategies and the potential for those strategies to succeed. The Annual Report and Accounts should not be relied on by any other party or any other purpose.

This Annual Report and Accounts contains certain forward-looking statements. These statements are made by the directors in good faith based on the information available to them up to the time of their approval of this report and such statements should be treated with caution due to the inherent uncertainties, including both economic and business risk factors, underlying any such forward-looking information.

Statement of Directors’ responsibilities in accordance with the Disclosure and Transparency Rules

The Directors confirm that, to the best of their knowledge:

a)the Group financial statements, which have been prepared in accordance with IFRS as adopted by the EU and IFRS as issued by the IASB, give a true and fair view of the assets, liabilities, financial position and profit of the Group; and

b)the Business review section contained in the Annual Report includes a fair review of the development and performance of the business and the position of the Group, together with a description of the principal risks and uncertainties that it faces.

On behalf of the Board

Signature: S Ingham, Chief Executive

S Ingham
Chief Executive
5 March 2009

Signature: S Puckett, Group Finance Director

S Puckett
Group Finance Director
5 March 2009