Day 127 - 23 May 95 - Page 60
1
2 Q. How long are accident books kept for?
3 A. Legally they have to be kept for three years.
4
5 Q. If you look at the front of those it says: "Record of
6 accidents, dangerous occurrences, ill-health enquiries.
7 This record must be kept available for inspection by HM
8 Inspectors of Health and Safety. An entry made in the
9 record must be kept for at least three years from the date
10 on which it was made." Do you know in general what the
11 practice of the restaurants is, if there is a general
12 practice, on the expiry of the three years so far as these
13 books are concerned?
14 A. In my experience, most restaurants you go into you find
15 that they have the books going back several years.
16
17 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Are they bound books or loose-leaf folders?
18 A. They come bound stapled. That I think is an incident
19 report book.
20
21 Q. The only reason I ask is, you see, this starts on 20th
22 September 1984 and it finishes, as Mr. Rampton, said in
23 December 1992. If it is bound that means, unless people
24 start tearing sheets out and throwing them away, that it is
25 going kept until the end of 1995, by which time the first
26 accident in the book has had a record retained of it for 11
27 and a quarter years?
28 A. Yes.
29
30 Q. So, depending where you come in the book, it might well be
31 that there will be some record of an accident going back
32 that sort of measure of time?
33 A. A long time, yes. They are bound together so they
34 cannot pull any pages out. They are stapled down the
35 middle. They are HMSO publications. They are standard
36 books.
37
38 MR. RAMPTON: Each page is headed, "Health and Safety Executive"
39 with a sort of symbol or logo on the left-hand corner?
40 A. Yes.
41
42 Q. Can I ask you one more thing about this while I have it
43 out? I have noticed from reading these pages that there is
44 a lady who is known, my Lord, as Gloria Sall whose first
45 recorded accident was on 27th April 1985 when she was a
46 crew member, and whose last recorded accident was on 10th
47 December 1992 by which time she was a Floor Manager. In
48 the interim she had suffered 19 different misfortunes, none
49 of them seriously, over that period from 1985 to 1987,
50 roughly speaking. Does that strike you as in any way
51 unusual or does it give you concern or anxiety?
52 A. I would suspect that she was just very diligent about
53 writing up her accidents in the accident book.
54
55 Q. They write them in themselves, do they?
56 A. They usually do, yes, but the rule on accident books is
57 they are left in an accessible place to the crew so that
58 they can put in their own accidents; that they advise the
59 managers they have had an accident but they put it in
60 themselves.
