Day 084 - 07 Feb 95 - Page 39


     
     1   Q.   Right, but what about non-reportable accidents?
     2        A.  It is a little difficult to say, because each store
     3        keeps a record of those in its own accident book.  The
     4        figures, I am not aware that they are ever collated
     5        throughout the company, that each accident book is gone
     6        through and some sort of tally made of these accidents.
     7
     8   Q.   You never make checks then on how frequent accidents are
     9        occurring in stores?
    10        A.  We have reportable accidents and the accident book for
    11        each restaurant is checked under a number of audit
    12        producers.
    13
    14   Q.   Checked by who?
    15        A.  They would be checked by the health and safety
    16        department, the regional health and safety officers that go
    17        out and check it.  It will also be checked by the
    18        restaurant supervisors when they are doing any audits and
    19        under our full field unannounced visits which happen once
    20        per year in each restaurant.
    21
    22   Q.   So you expect the stores to keep the accident books
    23        available for your inspection at all times, or do you
    24        actually tell them when you are coming to look at it or
    25        what?
    26        A.  No.  The regional safety and officers will go round and
    27        generally visit stores unannounced just to do a check, so
    28        they are available at any time for anyone to go in and have
    29        a look at.  Indeed, environmental health officers often
    30        check them when they go into the restaurants as well.  It
    31        is a readily available book.  It has to be because he crew
    32        member has to be able to find it quickly to enter the
    33        details in when they have had an accident.
    34
    35   Q.   Then so does head office ever kind of analyse what sort of
    36        accidents are occurring the most frequently of the
    37        non-reportable type or not at all?
    38        A.  I think it is a case of prioritising our time.  The
    39        accidents that cause us most concern are the more serious
    40        accidents, so that is where we tend to spend our time
    41        looking within the daily accident book.  You may just
    42        slightly cut your finger and it will go in there or a minor
    43        burn may go in there.  It is important to us, but we
    44        prioritise the major accidents as things that we think we
    45        should look at.  I think the effort of collating all these
    46        blue books throughout the country to find out whether a
    47        burn or a cut finger was the most frequent would not be a
    48        good use of our time; it would be better concentrating on
    49        the areas that cause more severe accidents.  It is a
    50        current to us, but it is less of a priority. 
    51 
    52   Q.   But a large number of more minor accidents might point to 
    53        something being wrong which could be something that leads
    54        to a major accident?
    55        A.  I am having difficulty visualising a case like that.
    56        If you think about a burn, we have things that are hot in
    57        the restaurants and on occasions someone will touch that
    58        and cause a minor burn.  We know that there is a
    59        possibility of a more serious burn, but that is covered in
    60        our training and our prioritisation of the other accidents.

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