Day 127 - 23 May 95 - Page 65
1 injury, yes?
2 A. Yes.
3
4 Q. Do you think that is a remediable situation?
5 A. Well, in fact, the numbers for 1994 came back to 40 per
6 cent.
7
8 Q. Here we have them at something nearer 50 per cent at the
9 end of 1993; is that right?
10 A. That is right. It is very difficult to say whether it
11 is just a normal variation in the percentage or whether it
12 is a real decrease, but the year before 1991, 1990, they
13 were at 50 per cent, just over 50 per cent, so we feel that
14 that 50 per cent down to 40 per cent in 1994 is a real
15 measurement, but it is very early days in terms of keeping
16 these statistics for .....
17
18 Q. The only other thing I was wondering about, although one
19 sees that "struck by" and "harmful substance" have both
20 gone up to over 10 per cent as opposed to being about five
21 per cent in 1991, was manual handling -- it was really
22 quite significant in 1991, 30 per cent of all accidents,
23 whereas in 1993 it had dropped back to about 11 or 12 per
24 cent, do you see that?
25 A. I do yes.
26
27 Q. Do you know the reason for that?
28 A. Certainly, we enhanced the training on manual handling,
29 I am not sure which year, but it is reflected in the crew
30 handbooks in terms of the information that we give.
31
32 Q. What do you mean, how you lift things?
33 A. Yes.
34
35 Q. Push them, that kind of thing?
36 A. That is right. But why, other than that, I really do
37 not know.
38
39 Q. It looks, Mrs. Barnes, from the figures you have been
40 telling us about that -- let us assume it is not as much as
41 one, but call it one -- for every one RIDDOR accident in a
42 restaurant, .8 at the moment, there are something like 100
43 accidents altogether, does that figure of 100 include the
44 RIDDORs? I mean, would the RIDDORs be found in the
45 accident book, I assume they would.
46 A. Really, the numbers are insignificant when you compare
47 it with 100. If there is only one RIDDOR per store per
48 year and there are 100 other accidents, whether that is a
49 total of 101 or whether it is 99 -----
50
51 Q. No, I am sorry. I am just being a lawyer. I apologise for
52 that. Call it 100 as against one.
53 A. Yes.
54
55 Q. First of all, does the figure of 100 of the non-RIDDORs per
56 annum per restaurant concern you?
57 A. Well, I would always like them to be less, and it is a
58 very wide classification, but I think, looking at the top
59 of that and being able to see a decrease in the RIDDOR
60 ones, gives us some encouragement that we are impacting on
