Day 132 - 07 Jun 95 - Page 25
1 MR. MORRIS: OK. (To the witness): I put it to you -- I do not
2 have to put it to you really -- is it not a fact that the
3 reason that the HSE report or investigation was helpful to
4 McDonald's was precisely because of the scale of different
5 EHO criticisms and suggestions, and that a national picture
6 was a much better way to proceed in terms of improving
7 safety, would you accept that?
8 A. I would accept the fact that the Health and Safety
9 Executive report was very useful to McDonald's because it
10 went into management of safety in a way that an individual
11 EHO would not because, obviously, he is just commenting on
12 individual matters. When it comes to the correlation of
13 information from EHOs and so on, I know that is something
14 that Jill Barnes had worked very hard on so that we made
15 sure the flow of information was right.
16
17 Q. So the correlation of the EHOs' criticisms prior to the
18 investigation by the HSE, there would have been some
19 ongoing ---
20 A. Work had been started on it.
21
22 Q. -- report or analysis?
23 A. You see, one of the problems is with the local
24 authority that if they went into a McDonald's and found a
25 defect, they might send up a letter or a comment, or
26 whatever, directly to that restaurant. Now, there is
27 always a risk under those circumstances that it is not
28 registered centrally, if you like, so what Jill did was to
29 make sure that she was notified of all EHO activity, make
30 sure that the Company responded positively to criticism and
31 make sure, obviously, that any underlying trends could be
32 identified. So that was part of the flow of information
33 that she set up.
34
35 Q. Right. Did you see that work that she had done in terms of
36 analysing the number of contacts that had happened with the
37 EHOs, what the trends were?
38 A. I have seen -- I saw the original letter that went to
39 all local authorities, suggesting that they contact direct,
40 giving them contact points and so on and so forth. I am
41 not sure of what statistical breakdowns have been done
42 since or whether, indeed, one is appropriate.
43
44 Q. So did these contacts that the EHOs were making, whether
45 they were informal letters or points or whatever, was that
46 something that applied to all regions? It was not
47 something that was happening in one region or something?
48 A. No, it applied right across the board. We tried to
49 centralise information from local authorities.
50
51 Q. But there were contacts from EHOs from all regions?
52 A. As far as I am aware, yes. I mean, EHOs are going to
53 inspect a McDonald's, certainly I would expect, on an
54 annual basis, depending on their resource, anything up to
55 four times a year in some instances. Every one of these is
56 going to create some sort of comment, I would have
57 expected.
58
59 Q. When you say four times a year, you mean that would be a
60 local authority would say: "We ought to check a McDonald's
