Creating a Safe Place to Work & Shop

We remain committed to achieving the highest standards of health and safety in all operational areas. No legal action has been taken against Carpetright for any health and safety or fire safety offence during the past year. We remain committed to eliminating all heavy manual handling from our stores. Wherever possible, each of our branches has a pedestrian operated boom truck to unload and move carpet and vinyl deliveries, and where it has not been possible to provide a truck we have arranged a series of nearby ‘buddy’ branches to accept deliveries.

Our aims in 2010/11 were:

• To ensure our new polices and procedures are fully embedded in every level of the business;
• To roll out 200 roll stock lifting devices;
• To undertake the British Safety Council’s 5 star award audit of health and safety standards at our central office, warehouse and distribution centre at Harris House; and
• To provide all retail store managers with the opportunity and support to take the British Safety Council Level 1 health and safety award.

Our Progress in 2010/11 was:

Embedding our policies and procedures

We have introduced health and safety as a standing agenda point on all senior management meetings and now publish a monthly health and safety bulletin to all our branches. We have also introduced Health and Safety Committees in both The Netherlands and Belgium that meet quarterly, to help ensure that the health and safety policies and procedures in Europe mirror those in the UK.

New carpet roll lifting device

We successfully completed the trial of a new carpet roll lifting device and have now delivered the first 120 of them to our retail branches. We remain committed to providing this machine to every Carpetright branch which retails roll stock. We are reviewing our targets for the coming year.

British Safety Council 5 Star Award

We have now undertaken the British Safety Council 5 Star Award pre-audit and are implementing policy and procedure improvements based on the outcome of the visit pending application for a full audit.

British Safety Council Level 1 Award

Thirty two of our thirty four Divisional Controllers and Regional Sales Managers obtained this award in the period. The necessity to set up each Region as a British Safety Council accredited examination centrehas made the administration of the target to provide each branch manager with the opportunity to sit the award unachievable at present.

Accidents

There has been a 12.7% decrease in the total number of accidents reported in the UK and RoI, from 197 last year to 172. We continue to encourage staff to report all accidents.

We are particularly pleased that we have achieved a 50% reduction in cut injuries this year following the issue of a new safety knife for cutting carpet and vinyl.

Disappointingly, our reportable accidents rose in the UK and RoI from 15 to 17, which was itself an increase on the previous year (2010:11). This remains below the long term average of 28 reportable accidents per annum. Every reportable accident is investigated, but no discernable trend or cause has been identified.

Under the same reporting methodology as the UK and RoI, Europe would have reported four accidents. The chart to the right shows the number of reportable accidents in the UK and RoI from 2007 – 2011.

Our targets for 2011/12 are:

• To incorporate accident data from the European Division into our accident statistics;
• To roll out further roll stock lifting devices;
• To conduct and review our induction and on-going safety training; and
• To ensure all our Regional Sales Administrators achieve the British Safety Council level 1 qualification.