Day 130 - 26 May 95 - Page 49


     
     1
     2   Q.   How long have restaurant management had to go through this
     3        basic health and safety one-day course?
     4        A.  Well, as I said earlier, I think it is something we
     5        introduced after the HSE assessment because we had
     6        introduced the basic hygiene one first, so that would make
     7        it 1992 or possibly 1993.
     8
     9   Q.   I am just going through your evidence-in-chief here, going
    10        back to -- I am sorry to dodge about all over the place.
    11
    12   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That does not matter.  If you just give in
    13        three words what the topic is you are coming to, then it
    14        gives everyone a chance to move their minds across to it.
    15
    16   MR. MORRIS:  Just going back to the accident statistics, you
    17        said that the accident book should be filled in.  Then you
    18        said the more accident data you can gather locally, the
    19        better information it gives you about trends; "It is not
    20        something we feel we can do corporately because every
    21        restaurant is laid out slightly differently".  That,
    22        Mrs. Barnes, is a load of rubbish is it not?  You are quite
    23        capable of compiling national statistics, if you thought it
    24        was important, based upon accidents books?
    25        A.  I think you have to look here in terms of benefits
    26        versus effort.  Certainly looking at the Colchester book
    27        this morning, many of the accidents there would have been
    28        specific to that restaurant.  With many of them there was
    29        nothing that we could have learnt from them Company-wide.
    30        I am not saying we could not improve what we do at the
    31        moment.  As I say, our intention is to start making records
    32        of lost time accidents, but unless we investigate them,
    33        unless we look into them and identify the causes, really
    34        the statistics themselves are not an awful lot of use to
    35        us.  That is what we want to go on as the next stage.
    36
    37        As I said yesterday, my ideal would be to have a
    38        computerised accidents book.  Yes, we could collate all the
    39        information but, as you see for yourself from the
    40        Colchester book, that is only ever as good as the amount of
    41        people following that system, or using that book, or
    42        putting in the information.  That is why it is really
    43        important that we have other proactive measures to see how
    44        we are doing with regard to safety.
    45
    46   Q.   I think, with respect to Mrs. Barnes, that there is quite a
    47        lot of information that we could glean from that accident
    48        book, and ones that were more extensively kept as well, and
    49        if you do not compile national statistics, it is because
    50        you do not want to learn the lessons that are there to be 
    51        learnt. 
    52        A.  Again, that is absolute rubbish.  In terms of it is my 
    53        decision as Hygiene and Safety Manager to decide the amount
    54        of effort we put into gathering the statistics versus other
    55        proactive measurements, such as unannounced visits to
    56        stores, actually monitoring whether people are working
    57        safely, and that is just not saying to them:  "Are you
    58        working safely?" but monitoring key activities to see they
    59        are doing them.  That is what we do.
    60

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