Health, safety and wellbeing

Our vision

We aim to help maintain and protect the wellbeing of our staff.

So what steps are needed to achieve this? We believe we need to:

• have systems in place to remain one of the industry-best in terms of accident, sickness and absence rates
• incorporate mental health and wellbeing within health and safety work
• provide suitable and safe working environments.

Where are we now?

Health, safety, security and equal opportunity measures for staff remain integral to our business. We have:

• a core health and safety group supporting health and safety across the whole company 
• dedicated health and safety advisers responsible for implementing health and safety strategy within individual business units 
• good links with safety professionals in the water industry, which allows us to share best practice 
• procedures for investigating accidents and sharing of lessons learnt across the company through safety alerts, tool box talks, team brief and internal publications such as Source and Messenger 
• dedicated occupational health service to help staff with any health related issues 
• health surveillance and screening for staff engaged in certain activities, eg, confined space working
• access to a free, private health care scheme for all employees 
• a well established sports and social club with a range of activities and events for staff and their families.

We continue to look at how we manage health and safety to make sure we follow current best practice. Keeping our high standards is critical in the success of our business.

During 2009-10, we saw continued reductions in incidents compared to the previous year with only 12 reportable incidents compared to 15 in 2008-09. The number of major accidents remained the same as in 2008-09 at just three.

Over the last five years we have seen a 75% reduction in the number of incidents that resulted in more than three days lost due to injuries sustained at work – eight down from 32 in 2005.

The reduction in the number of incidents where injuries from trips, slips, falls and manual handling are the major causes, demonstrates the benefits of focusing on improved safety training and awareness and better reporting across all parts of the business.

During 2009 a total of 172 Operations staff attended health and safety awareness training courses comprising updates on accidents and accident reporting, machinery guarding, site tidiness and pump lifting procedures.

Staff were also shown a 15 minute “horrific accidents” DVD as part of these courses.

We continue to investigate all incidents and incorporate improvements as we strive for continuous improvement in safety performance.