I believe the reason for these changes is beacuse Google are now letting .com websites onto the .co.uk SERPs. Matt Cutts explains what's going on in this video http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-about-generic-tlds-in-say-uk-results/ The trend is likely to continue, so you guys should be getting ready to compete with .coms on the UK search market. Good luck.