COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
Smiths continues to support good community relations practices, both corporately and through our businesses worldwide. With long-established roots in their local communities, where they are often the major employer, Smiths' businesses take an active role in the community in schools, universities and through charitable projects. As well as actively raising funds for local charities and institutions, Smiths' initiatives aim to encourage more students to follow science, maths and engineering careers. In the USA, businesses engage in 'senior' projects, where students are given a real life engineering task/challenge within a Smiths Aerospace programme, then work with Smiths' engineers to resolve it. In the UK, Smiths continues to support the UK 'Year in Industry' programme and the 'Young Engineers' competition.

EMPLOYEE INFORMATION AND CONSULTATION
The provision of information to, and communication with, our employees is an important part of how we conduct our business. At business unit level, communication takes place through a variety of channels including team briefings, presentations and newsletters. Many businesses have established forums for the exchange of information and best practice, as well as discussion of current issues, including business efficiency initiatives, training and development, environment, and health and safety.

In the UK, we are developing our arrangements for workplace information and consultation so that all sites will be covered by such arrangements. This will also facilitate the effective functioning of our Smiths European Forum (SEF).

The SEF meets annually to discuss issues of a transnational nature with representatives of employees from EU countries. Topics covered at this year's SEF meeting, held in Cheltenham in May, ranged from: the financial performance of the Group; Smiths' external profile; trends towards flexibility in workplace arrangements; the Group's environment, health and safety performance and progress; the challenges of operating in global markets and their impact on employment issues; and the need to review the SEF constitution in the light of the expansion of the EU and the upcoming implementation of the EU Directive on information and consultation.

Also in the UK, the Company has agreed new arrangements for consultation with employee representatives covering members and pensioners of all its UK pension schemes. These arrangements, which build on existing procedures for the Smiths Industries Pension Scheme, have been designed to ensure effective communication and consultation on current issues and proposed changes to the pension schemes which may affect members and/or pensioners, and to enable representatives to express their views to the Company on the operation of the pension schemes. The new Smiths UK National Pensions Forum will hold its first meeting in October 2004.

ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH AND SAFETY
Our priorities
We have been working hard to give Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) issues a high priority in the way we do business in Smiths. Improved EHS performance reduces costs, creates business opportunities and minimises risk. Our EHS strategy is to focus on the following priorities:

•	implementing ISO 14001 across our manufacturing operations;
•	rolling out a comprehensive health and safety audit system;
•	improving the quality and interpretation of our data;
•	listening to the views of our stakeholders and reporting on progress externally;
•	improving our eco-efficiency by reducing energy, water, waste and emissions;
•	reducing the number of work-related accidents; and
•	integrating environmental thinking into the design of new products.