In this study, we investigate the application of the new successive linearisation method (SLM) to the problem of unsteady heat and mass transfer from a stretching surface embedded in a porous medium with suction/injection and thermal radiation effects. The governing nonlinear momentum, energy and mass transfer equations are successfully solved numerically using the SLM approach coupled with the spectral collocation method for iteratively solving the governing linearised equations. Comparison of the SLM results for various flow parameters against numerical results and other published results, obtained using the homotopy analysis method (HAM) and RungeKutta methods, for related problems indicates that the SLM is a very powerful tool which is much more accurate and efficient than other methods. The SLM converges much faster than the traditional methods like the HAM and is very easy to implement. (c) 2011 Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering