Health and safety

We recognise the importance of strong and consistent health and safety performance in protecting our people, our assets and our business integrity.

Last year, we brought all the health and safety teams operating across our UK operations into one central team so we now have consistent health and safety standards supported by improved checks and a greater safety awareness and competence among our employees. This will allow us to focus on reducing and measuring risk control rather than just dealing with accidents in isolation.

In 2007, our reported accident incident rate per 100,000 employees, as reported to the Health and Safety Executive, increased significantly from 498 to 1,101. However, this does not reflect a (significant) increase in reported accidents but the change in profile of our employees following the sale of Vertex. There now being more operational than office-based employees.

In our new approach to health and safety management, we will be ensuring that our employees maintain the right knowledge, skills and competence levels to work as safely as possible.