Day 128 - 24 May 95 - Page 43
1 months afterwards, so it was top management that was
2 involved which, to be honest with you, is a lot higher
3 level than the task force.
4
5 Q. Were the incidents of other electric shocks discussed at
6 these meetings?
7 A. They certainly have been since.
8
9 Q. There have been problems with the tills giving electric
10 shocks, have there not, in some stores?
11 A. I know of one electric shock from a till system.
12
13 Q. Which store was that at?
14 A. I think that was at Rugby, and it was two or three
15 years ago.
16
17 Q. You are not aware of any in the southern region?
18 A. Not that spring to mind, no.
19
20 Q. Can I just ask a couple of questions about the Health and
21 Safety Executive report. There are just a couple of things
22 I wanted to clarify. Sorry, it is volume XIII, I think,
23 tab 55. If you turn to page 827 under paragraph 2.36,
24 I think part of this was read yesterday: "Crew meetings
25 are important, but their frequency was variable and the
26 inclusion of health and safety tended to be reactive. Some
27 restaurants held them monthly, displayed agendas in crew
28 rooms beforehand and arranged follow-up social events to
29 help boost attendance." Is that a social event
30 immediately after that?
31 A. I would not know.
32
33 Q. You do not know. "But, in other cases they were quite often
34 only arranged to inform of new promotions ... which were
35 being introduced" -- presumably, when it say "promotions",
36 that is talking about special offers ---
37 A. Yes, I would think so.
38
39 Q. -- "rather than to provide a regular update and a forum for
40 an exchange of information. They had been used effectively
41 in some stores when introducing the COSHH procedures, where
42 they had been organised specifically for this purpose. In
43 routine crew meetings health and safety discussion was
44 limited generally to highlighting outstanding
45 equipment/premises disrepair or reacting to some failure.
46 Health and safety was not being incorporated routinely into
47 regular crew meetings in such a way that it was promoted
48 positively."
49
50 Is that generally the practice at stores, that if there is
51 an item in disrepair, a piece of equipment in disrepair,
52 that it would be brought up at a crew meeting rather than
53 just being dealt with, you know, as and when it was
54 discovered?
55 A. I would expect in most stores, and again going back to
56 my time when I was a manager, for crew and managers to come
57 to me if they saw anything that they were concerned about.
58 However, a structured part of the rap sessions is to go
59 through different sorts of equipment to see if there have
60 been any problems, and since crew meetings routinely follow
