This impact encompasses our significant public interest role in maintaining and building trust in the capital markets. Providing confidence to investors and businesses through the best possible quality in our audit work encourages a strong and stable financial system, ultimately supporting economic growth.

We believe our work is playing an important part in contributing to the economic recovery in the UK. We advise British business leaders on a variety of issues ranging from organisational change to overseas expansion. An important part of our efforts to increase the competitiveness of British business is through our help in managing their tax affairs effectively and complying with regulations in an increasingly complex global economy. Our work across digital and analytics is driving innovation, helping increase productivity and providing our clients with solutions to the most complex of problems. We have advised on major infrastructure projects across the nation and are spurring debate within government on ways to encourage trade and investment in the UK.

I am immensely proud to report on our broader contribution to a sustainable and more prosperous society. We have many great initiatives in place at Deloitte such as our Social Innovation Pioneers, which support the most promising social enterprises across the UK, as well as the work we do with our national charity partners – Mind, Alzheimer’s Society and Prostate Cancer UK. As part of our dedication to greater social mobility, we launched our skills and education programme, Deloitte Access, a pioneering initiative with TeachFirst where our people volunteer hundreds of hours a year to support the development of young people in schools across the UK.

Investing in the learning and development of our own people remains a key priority. In FY14 we hired over 3,400¹ employees including over 1,000 graduates. This year, we invested £27 million on our people’s learning and education equipping them to make a material difference to our clients’ ability to succeed and grow. Over and above our focus on developing the talents of our own people, we are committed to building the skills of Britain’s current and future business leaders. Our Next Generation CFO Programme, where we help develop the skills and expertise required by senior finance executives, is very highly regarded within the FTSE 350 and we are extending this unrivalled training across other executive level positions.

We have made great progress this year but I recognise that we have not achieved all we set out to do and there are areas where we can improve on our performance. We need to make tangible progress on our Women in Leadership agenda. Diversity brings great value, both to our business and that of our clients, and we have set targets of having 25% female partners by 2020 and 30% by 2030. The launch of our agile working programme, which gives employees the power to choose where, when and how they work, should help in our pursuit of these aims.

While the marketplace has been challenging, I believe that the quality, passion and energy of our people over the last few years has impacted positively both on our clients and the broader society. We will work hard to improve this impact in FY15 and beyond.