Day 128 - 24 May 95 - Page 28
1 description?
2 A. Yes, that is right.
3
4 MS. STEEL: You said yesterday about the operations and
5 training manual; there is not an English equivalent in the
6 same format?
7 A. As the operations and training manual, yes. There is a
8 health and safety manual now.
9
10 Q. When you said "in the same format", is there an operations
11 and training manual in another format?
12 A. No, there is not really. That is used for all the
13 basic Operations information, and then there would be,
14 perhaps, a breakfast procedures document, or a meat care
15 manual, so we add things on that, sort of, bring out the
16 differences that we have here in the UK.
17
18 Q. What is this health and safety manual?
19 A. It is something that we introduced as part of our
20 commitment to the Health and Safety Executive.
21
22 Q. In response to their report?
23 A. That is correct.
24
25 Q. Right.
26 A. It was not in existence at the time of the report.
27
28 Q. Was there anything similar, or, at that time, were people
29 expected to rely on the American operations and training
30 manual?
31 A. At the time health and safety information was all in
32 the policy document that we went through yesterday, the one
33 that is laminated and posted, that is then in the personnel
34 policies and procedure manual, but there was not a specific
35 health and safety manual.
36
37 Q. That was the one that was dated April 1991?
38 A. The one we looked at yesterday, yes.
39
40 Q. You said yesterday that it is not possible to stop all
41 accidents, but you could cut them down by a huge amount,
42 could you not, if you got rid of hustle and told employees
43 not to work at speed; expressly told them: "Do not work at
44 speed".
45 A. There is no evidence from the RIDDOR statistics that we
46 keep, and the accidents investigation forms we get in, that
47 running and rushing is a significant contribution factor.
48 In fact, I suppose several times over the years, I have
49 gone through the slips and falls accidents, in particular,
50 to see if could I pick out the ones that, where people were
51 running, and invariably they are walking. It specifically
52 says in the information we were given from store they were
53 walking. You could argue that that information is wrong,
54 but it does not seem to come out in the reportable
55 accidents that the "hustle" part of it has played a
56 significant factor. That is not to say there is not the
57 odd accident where we will have identified that, yes,
58 perhaps they were running.
59
60 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I do not think Ms. Steel's question was
