Creating a Safe Place to Work & Shop

We are committed to achieve the highest standards of health and safety in all operational areas, not only for our staff but also for all those who may be affected by what we do.

Our aims

• To develop and implement health and safety management systems and relevant procedures.
• Stores will be safe and we will introduce new equipment (e.g. mechanical boom trucks) so that heavy loads do not need to be handled physically by the staff.
• We will find a new and safer system for cutting carpets and vinyls in our shops.
• Health and Safety training will be given to everyone.
• To ensure that risk assessment and effective safe systems of work are vital components of the health and safety management strategy.
• To secure the support of all employees at all levels to make this policy truly effective.

Our Progress 08/09

All Carpetright Group’s Health and Safety procedures manuals, including the manuals for the new Harris House central warehouse and distribution facility, have be re-written and published. The new manuals rely heavily on photographs to demonstrate safe systems of working.

• We have continued our roll-out programme of mechanical boom trucks to those of our stores that handle roll stock. All boom truck operators and boom truck trainers undergo full training to a nationally recognised standard before they are permitted to operate this equipment. We remain committed to eliminating manual handling both in our stores and in our central warehouse as far as is reasonably practicable.
• A new carpet and vinyl cutting safety knife has been sourced from Germany and will be available to all stores by the end of June 2009. The new knife will replace the craft knives currently used and is expected to lead to a substantial reduction in knife cut injuries.
• Providing competent and fully documented health and safety training to staff on demand has always been a major difficulty in a widespread business like Carpetright. We have now solved this problem by launching an e-learning programme available as required on the stores’ till system. All staff in UK and the Republic of Ireland is in the process of completing this training, the progress and results of which is centrally monitored. We have also conducted a review of our induction training as a result of which every member of staff is now inducted on their first day at work with us.
• The new manuals include risk assessments and safe systems of work covering every task undertaken in a Carpetright store and in addition store managers are required to conduct site–specific risk assessments where necessary to ensure the particular characteristics of individual stores are taken into account.
• We understand the need both to ensure our work force has the opportunity to raise safety concerns in a formal setting and the benefits of communicating directly with our colleagues. To help meet this aspiration we have established quarterly Health and Safety Committees at divisional level and each of those Divisional committees’ reports into the central Health and Safety committee. We have additionally established a new central committee for both the office and warehouse staff of Harris House which also meets quarterly.
• With the support of our suppliers we have reduced the volume per bag of underlay to ensure no bag weighs more than the recommended 25kg.
• To ensure all accident and near miss data is centrally collated we have stopped using in-store Accident Books and all accidents etc are now reported centrally to our out-sourced help desk. This ensures we both capture all available accident data improving our understanding of accident trends and fully comply with RIDDOR Regulations reporting requirements.

Our accident levels have yet again fallen year on year as illustrated in the table below :

Of particular note, falls from height have reduced by more than 50% and accidents involving manual handling by approximately 40%.

Only 11 accidents required onward reporting to the Health and Safety Executive under the RIDDOR Regulations, compared with 50 last year.

Our targets 09/10

• Continue to reduce accidents and near misses by monitoring and responding to identified trends
• Developing central information databases
• To continue researching and developing a new user-friendly roll stock lifting device for stores
• To improve our working relationship with our contractors to ensure we work safely together
• To ensure staff of the Sleepright brand are fully integrated into our operation
• To continue to develop e learning modules.