Health & Safety IAN PROSSER
Passenger and Workforce Fatality Rates on European Union Railways 2007 -2010 Source: RSSB (based on data from Eurostat).
Normalised workforce fatalities Normalised passenger fatalities EU Average
• Tramways safety performance remains very good, and comparable to the best performing in Europe, aided by a positive safety culture and robust safety management systems.
• Level crossing safety improved, as levels of recorded harm reduced by 15% over the past year, maintaining historically low rates.
However, no-one can afford to be complacent, and the industry’s record is only as good as its next incident. So we need to maintain excellent standards. Indeed, the report also highlights areas of concern, on which ORR is pressing for improvements:
• An increase in the number of potentially higher risk train accidents from 18 to 34 over the past year. However, it is important to note that this is still the second lowest total on record.
• Workforce safety on the mainline railway deteriorated slightly, with increased levels of harm to train drivers and on board crew. With the number of workforce hours taken into account, the rate of harm increased by 4% over the past year.
• ORR’s safety enforcement on heritage railways increased, as the number of improvement and prohibition notices to ensure safety on the lines increased from four in 2010-11 to ten in 2011- 12. This year ORR will be focussing inspection activity on heritage railways across Britain, to ensure they are being operated safely.
ORR’s approach to health and safety regulation is evidence-based, and usually focuses on advice and encouragement to companies, leading to an improvement in their risk management. We expect the industry to take a proportionate approach to risk management, so that workers and the public are not put in harm’s way. Occasionally, we must use our more formal powers to force change or deal with immediate risk, and over the past year our inspectors have issued a number of improvement and prohibition notices, and launched criminal prosecutions, stepping in to ensure safety is not compromised.
While we acknowledge businesses may from time to time ‘fail’, an excellent business will learn from the failure and will have a much greater likelihood of getting things right in the future. I believe excellence in safety culture and management is not about gold-plating risk controls, or ‘safety at any price’, throwing money at risk mitigation that goes beyond what is required by the law, to deliver ever decreasing amounts of risk reduction.
It is how a business achieves effective risk management that defines excellence. An excellent business:
• Anticipates hazards and assesses risks, leading to timely and efficient spend on effective control measures, i.e. doing the right things, in the right way, first time and at the right time.
• Continuously challenges the status quo and is opportunistic in seeking improvements.
London Underground, Overground and Docklands Light Railway all achieved a year without any workforce and industry caused passenger fatalities.
• Recognises the value of wider benefits to its business from excellent health and safety risk control.
• Views its statutory health and safety duties as part and parcel of managing its total business risks.
Over the coming year, ORR inspectors will focus on helping the rail sector to develop a cutting-edge approach to safety. This will involve a greater use of proactive, forward- looking safety management systems, implementing change safely, against a background of reforms, including improved efficiency and the embedding of a professional culture where health and safety is ‘front and centre’ of everything it does.
It is vital that the whole rail industry continues to work together, builds on its successes, and tackles areas where there is room for improvement.
RailCONNECT 31
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