db <- odbcDriverConnect(connection = "Driver={SQL Server Native Client 10.0};Server=server; Database=db;Trusted_Connection=yes;")
results <- sqlQuery(db, "select timestamp from table where some-restriction")

attr(results$timestamp,"tzone") <- "UTC"

results$timestamp <- as.POSIXlt(results$timestamp)

tm <- as.POSIXlt(Sys.time())
tm
[1] "2011-09-20 13:45:01 BST"
attr(tm,"tzone") <- "UTC"
tm
[1] "2011-09-20 13:45:01 UTC"

library(lubridate)
tz(results) <- "UTC"