Health & Safety

As a key constituent of our objective we ensure that we achieve it through ‘promoting high standards in all health, safety and welfare matters, for the benefit of everyone who comes in contact with our operations’.

We fully comply with all health and safety legislation and are dedicated to reducing the Group's incident and accident rates, whilst also providing good on-site welfare facilities and a safe environment for all our stakeholders.

During the reporting period the Group was:

• Re-certified to the OHSAS 18001:2007 Health and Safety Management standard with no non-conformances, demonstrating that our well integrated and robust Health and Safety Management Systems are fully compliant.
• Upgraded from the Gold to Platinum Certificate for Employer Commitment to the Construction Skills Certification Scheme.
• Accredited by Site Safety Plus to train our employees and subcontractors on the Site Managers Safety Training Scheme and Site Supervisors Safety Training Scheme courses and similarly by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on the First Aid at Work course.

In addition, in November 2008, we were accredited to the Contractors Health & Safety Assessment Scheme (CHAS) for the first time. CHAS has been developed by local authority health and safety and procurement professionals, with the support of the HSE to scrutinise companies Health & Safety standards. Companies apply to join the scheme so that it is widely understood that they meet good standards of health and safety compliance, thereby enabling them to work with a wide range of organisations.

The CHAS Accreditation was achieved by the Group in relation to our roles as the following CDM Duty Holders:

• CDM-Coordinator
• Designer
• Principal Contractor

This accreditation ensures that we can demonstrate competence in all these areas and can therefore work with our employees and subcontractors to achieve higher standards.

Accident Incident Rate

Our Accident Incident Rate (AIR) has fallen and has remained below the National AIR for the Construction Industry for the last six years. The Group's AIR for 2008/9 averaged at 669 reportable injury incidents per 100,000 persons employed (829 in 2007/8) which compares favourably with the National AIR for our industry of 904 (865 in 2007/8). We intend to maintain our Accident Incident Rate below the National benchmark.

Since 2004 there have been no Prohibition or Improvement Notices issued to the Group by the HSE.

Working practices and awareness

To promote change to working practices we continue to encourage staff and members of our key supply chain to attend our health and safety specific training courses, where relevant. We also provide mandatory site specific health, safety and environmental induction training, as well as toolbox talks for all site based workers.

The Group fully endorses the Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS). We are committed to all staff and sub-contractors visiting or working on the Group’s sites being in possession of a CSCS/affiliated card or providing evidence of being registered with the appropriate skills and organisations to obtain one. To date 96% (91% in 2008) of the Group’s employees that require a CSCS card have obtained them. The remaining 4% are new and existing employees in various stages of obtaining their CSCS Cards.

Inspections of all our construction sites by our Head of Health and Safety (Associate Director status) and the Department’s Officers take place at least twice monthly. Additionally, all our offices and sales centres are inspected on a regular basis.

To raise awareness within communities of the dangers of construction sites, we continue to engage with schools and colleges to pass on the health, safety and environmental safety message wherever possible.

Initiatives

Through monitoring and inspection within Countryside Properties and the wider industry subcontractor supervisory competence has been highlighted as an area that requires improvement. The Group has therefore launched an initiative to improve subcontractor training and levels of competence. This is led by our Health & Safety department through the delivery of Site Safety Supervisors Training Scheme courses for our preferred and trusted subcontractors. The aim is to continually improve the health and safety knowledge of our subcontractors and our key personnel who supervise tradesmen, and help them to acknowledge their responsibilities. In the future they will then be able to demonstrate competence under CDM at site level. This is a key driver in improving our safety performance and reducing incidents and accidents across the Group.

Back to Top | Next

Crossways, Tower Hamlets, London

Peckham Partnership, London

Priors Green, Takeley, Essex

Woolwich Green, Woolwich, London