Produce World and HSE to work together on Health & Safety
This is one of the first ventures of its kind in our region and will bring wide ranging benefits to all businesses in the Group. The involvement of HSE in the project, as the enforcing body on Health and Safety issues, will effectively strengthen the position of the Group in the eyes of all its stakeholders. It will also be a chance for the sites to strengthen ties with their HSE Inspectors in a mutually beneficial way.
Since late 2007 the Group Health Safety and Environmental Compliance Manager, John Caney, has been in discussion with HSE Inspectors Linda-Jane Rigby and Gavin Bull about the possibilities of launching such a project, and this culminated in a meeting between H&S representatives from all Produce World sites and senior representatives from HSE's Cambridgeshire Inspection Group.
The meeting was also attended by Produce World Directors Moira Trafford (HR Director) and Gordon Fairbrother (CSR Director).
Senior HSE Inspector, David Head, explained the aims of the project and described the fundamental principles as being
- to improve the Produce World 's management of Health and Safety.
- to assess the consistency (not uniformity) of Health and Safety standards across the Group.
- gaining Health and Safety compliance through co-operation rather than enforcement.
HSE understand, and are happy, that Produce World's constituent companies have differing methods of implementing the management of Health and Safety. As a result they propose to conduct visits to all of the companies within the Group.
These visits will take about two to three days per site and will take the form of structured interviews of different levels of management followed by site inspections. It is envisaged that the whole project will take between two and three years to complete.
Clearly, they will be unable to look at all the Health and Safety issues that may affect the workplaces and will be instead focusing on the main issues that they feel affect the industry:
A provisional list of these is as follows:
Workplace Transport
Management of Agency Workers
Manual Handling
Safe Interventions with Machinery / Confined spaces
Contractor Control
The reports will seek to highlight things Produce World Ltd Group does well and identify areas in which improvements could be made.
Interim feedback will be given after each site visit on immediate issues.
Any areas of extreme concern encountered during the visits will be dealt with immediately in line with HSE's enforcement policy. Reactive incidents (such as accidents, complaints etc) will be dealt with on a normal basis.
What happens next? Produce World have been asked to nominate the first companies to come under the spotlight. After some deliberation it was decided that this will be Isleham Fresh Produce closely followed by R.B.Organic. It is envisaged that first inspections will begin in September 2008.
Produce World hope that the relationships that are built with the HSE and its inspectors during this time will continue on a proactive basis long after the project is complete.
In a spin-off venture, Moira Trafford will be working closely with David Head on a project aimed at integrating migrant workers more effectively into the workforces of businesses across the region.
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