Day 130 - 26 May 95 - Page 22
1 or getting that done. I do not understand this thing about
2 the one below that, about more pages have been stamped than
3 tests reported in the equipment service history form. What
4 does that mean?
5 A. Well, Bellec, were one of the companies that were doing
6 our regular portable appliance testing, so they come in
7 every six to 12 months, depending on the equipment, to
8 check it, and make a stamp in the equipment log that they
9 had checked it, and it was safe. When we looked at the log
10 and looked at the print out from their computer, because
11 they have little hand-held computer, the two did not
12 correlate. That was one of the things that we went back to
13 the contractors on, and we introduced into the audit, on
14 electrical equipment.
15
16 Q. In your summary of "Main Points For Action", there is
17 nothing about water on the floor, missing handle or
18 employees' shoes, is there?
19 A. No. As I say, that certainly did not come out in the
20 facts that I gathered.
21
22 Q. I am just skipping ahead here, page 10: "The health and
23 safety management plan is being formulated to comply with
24 the Health and Safety Executive's recommendations, to
25 improve compliance with existing and new legislation, and
26 to incorporate lessons learned from this accident." So in
27 some ways there were three areas of, if you like, pressure
28 to change things, to improve things ---
29 A. There was of -----
30
31 Q. -- all at the same?
32 A. There were three reasons why the plan was put forward,
33 although I could probably add a fourth, in that the
34 document that we shared with you yesterday, Successful
35 Health and Safety Management, had come out at the end of
36 1991 as well. So, for the first time it gave us a template
37 for a management plan.
38
39 Q. Moving on to what would be page 14, effectively, which is
40 the memo from Paul Preston. This is about the residual
41 current circuit breakers. The third paragraph in the
42 following steps section, they cost about £20. Presumably,
43 they are a bit more now, but is that what they cost?
44 A. The problem with those ones you buy from DIY stores is
45 they are not fail-safe. They do break after a certain
46 amount of time. So that is why we decided not to go for
47 RCDs fitted on the plugs, which that was. The other thing
48 is if you have RCDs fitted to a plug, somebody can take it
49 off and put a normal plug on. That is why we went for
50 actually proofing all the circuits with RCDs as quickly as
51 we could arrange it, but that was a short term, interim
52 measure we felt would reduce the risk straightaway.
53
54 Q. Going to the last four pages. It starts off with the
55 chart; it has a small one at the bottom right-hand corner.
56
57 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I think I have got a bit out of sync here.
58 After the plug I go to the one with a "2" on it, and then
59 the family tree, then the one with a "1" on it, and then
60 the update of action.
