Committed to health and safety

Health and safety is at the heart of our corporate responsibility. Protecting our employees, contractors and all visitors from injury and promoting employee well-being is fundamental to our business philosophy. We are committed to developing and maintaining a positive health and safety culture in which statutory requirements are viewed as a minimum standard and leading performance our goal.

Attaining leading performance

The total recordable injury rate dropped from 0.60 in 2005 to 0.17 in 2006, a 72% reduction, taking us to leading health and safety performance levels. This has been delivered through visible leadership, simple systems and clear expectations. These three core objectives will continue to fuel our drive for sustained leading performance.

We were delighted to win the Gold Award for the second year running in The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents 2006 Awards. The Award recognises and celebrates the achievement of a high standard and improvement of health and safety at work over four years.

Processes underpinning performance

The incident investigation and review process launched two years ago continues to provide a firm platform for the identification of health and safety learning opportunities. “Spotlight on Safety” is our implementation of the internationally proven DuPont™ STOP™ programme, a behavioural safety programme which provides the cornerstone of our health and safety culture. Together these processes have been vital to the strong improvements we have delivered in our performance.

Communicating the safety message

Our weekly safety bulletin briefing process provides a fast track for safety communication to all staff, through which we can draw attention to specific safety issues and our performance record, and recognise achievements. In addition, the safety representatives and management team members of the Health and Safety Advisory Committee continue to play a vital role in facilitating staff consultation on health and safety issues.

The second year of the twinning arrangement between ourselves and ScottishPower’s Longannet Power Station produced real safety benefits for both parties through information sharing and learning opportunities. We have also further developed our relationship with E.ON and Corus, again through sharing our health and safety practices.