Through social and educational support, we aim to bring positive benefits and to change young people's lives. We recognise the importance of making sure the future workplace is equipped with the skills that society and industry demands and by supporting specific projects we aim to help young people in the community reach their full potential.

To support this approach over the past 12 months, the community and management teams have developed partnerships with leading local universities, colleges and schools to encourage young people to consider a career in airport management.

We support the ethos of work experience by giving Year in Industry students the benefit of a work placement. This gives practical experience of work before entering the academic arena.

To underpin the commitment to make a positive contribution to the environment, we are working in partnership with organisations to support projects which improve the quality of the environment for the local community.

As well as offering financial assistance, BAA Scotland aims to involve staff as volunteers in as many projects as possible. Their time and specialist skills are an important additional resource to projects such as Young Enterprise, Common Purpose, Young Engineers, Business mentoring and Young Fire Fighters Association. We are pleased to report that our staff gave 1,812 volunteering hours to community projects and we estimate the financial value of this contribution to be around £30,000 – this is based on man hours contributed multiplied by BAA Scotland's average hourly salary.

Another major strand of the community relations strategy is to develop long term relationships with local authorities, businesses and organisations to enhance the economic, social and employment benefits to the wider community. BAA Aberdeen already work closely with the local Scottish Enterprise companies and Chambers of Commerce which bring together the public and private sector, business community and voluntary sector so that different initiatives and services support each other.

The world renowned Fraser of Allander Institute, based at Glasgow University reports that BAA Scotland is responsible for supporting almost £1.5bn worth of output and just over 32,000 FTE jobs across Scotland. In addition airport development in Scotland has contributed a further £500m plus hundreds of construction industry jobs in the last ten years.