Day 127 - 23 May 95 - Page 67
1 Q. Yes, or the Mark Hopkins -----
2 A. Yes, exactly, so you need to look at each one
3 individually, and accident statistics are only part of what
4 we do to measure safety performance.
5
6 MR. RAMPTON: Can I ask, arising out of that, Mrs. Barnes, is
7 the position -- perhaps I will ask it in a non-leading way
8 -- are you concerned more with percentage reductions or
9 with actual numbers of accidents which happen to people?
10 A. Well, neither, to be honest. With trends in the
11 accidents, the type of accidents, with specific accident
12 types, would also building that into other records like our
13 safety audit performance, where we are measuring the
14 proactive things we are trying to do to prevent accidents.
15
16 Just coming back again to risk assessment, that is a much
17 more positive way of looking at it. We have seen our
18 safety audit scores raise steadily from mid 60s to over 80
19 per cent in the last two years. That is measuring -- my
20 people going into stores unannounced, seeing physically the
21 safety of the store is better, seeing safer behaviour and
22 seeing more stringent management systems in place in the
23 restaurants. That, we know, is giving us a real measure;
24 whereas with the accident statistics it could be a matter
25 of luck whether something turns up on there or not.
26
27 Q. Can we then against that background turn, please, to tab 55
28 of this document where we see a bulky document (which, you
29 will be pleased to hear, we are not going to look at much
30 of this afternoon) produced, apparently, by the HSE, the
31 Health and Safety Executive, headed: "The Management of
32 Occupational Health and Safety in McDonald's Restaurants
33 Limited". Then there is a picture of something which I do
34 not know what it is -- it looks like a warehouse -- with
35 "McDonald's" on it. It is subheaded: "A Report by the
36 Accident Prevention Advisory Unit, August 1992". I said
37 April; I was wrong about that. Published in August 1992.
38
39 One sees on page 800 that the work took place between
40 December 1991 and April 1992. That is to say, the work on
41 the ground, it seems so. Then it says: "This report
42 should be read in conjunction with HSE published guidance
43 'Successful Health and Safety Management'" which is an
44 HMSO publication coming out in 1991.
45
46 Mrs. Barnes, how did it come about that this Report was
47 written?
48 A. Well, in the summer of 1991 the Health and Safety
49 Executive approached us and asked if we would be willing to
50 participate in their carrying out an assessment of our
51 health and safety management systems. The advantage they
52 could see to us was at that time we were dealing 300 local
53 authorities nationwide who all had their particular
54 perception of what we should be doing in our restaurants.
55 They offered us a central approach in terms of their giving
56 us advice on what we were doing and were then going to
57 communicate that to all the different Environmental Health
58 Officers.
59
60 This they had done successfully with other companies, so
