We've always made health and safety our highest priority and we're proud of the reputation we've developed as one of the UK's leading performers in this area.

  Our excellent health and safety record has largely been due to the strength of our management processes, which make sure everyone in Powergen recognises they are responsible for their own safety and that of their colleagues. To make sure we remain our excellent health and safety standards, we set our businesses challenging objectives each year.  

Health and safety performance objectives

For 2003 these were:

• Sustain no more than 16 major or fatal injuries to Powergen and contractor staff across the UK business (this is in line with Powergen's 10-year commitment under SAFELEC 2010 to reduce major and fatal injuries by 50%).
• Each business unit to maintain a Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) below a threshold of best practice, assigned on the basis of past performance and the need for continuous improvement. If the TRIR is above the threshold of best practice at the beginning of the performance period, significant and speedy action must be taken to get the level to this threshold.
• Each business unit to set and achieve a target for sickness absence for Powergen staff, in line with practice.
• Each business unit to prepare and deliver a health and safety plan to include at least the following:
• A review of performance against 2002 targets and objectives
• Business-specific targets and objectives for 2003, showing continuous improvement
• A strategy for delivering 2003 targets and objectives.
  

TRIR

The TRIR indicates the total number of medical treatment, lost-time, major and reportable injuries and diseases per 100,000 hours worked. Targets for each business were set and overall TRIR decreased to 0.39 from 0.63 in 2002.  

Total Recordable Injury Rate

  These figures show that our efforts to promote the importance of health and safety across Powergen benefits by creating a safer working environment for everyone.  

SAFELEC 2010

In 2000, the Government launched its 10-year 'Revitalising Health and Safety' strategy to give fresh impetus to health and safety at work. The electricity industry reacted by developing 'SAFELEC 2010', which sets out how we as an industry will contribute to the Government's targets.   Being fully committed to SAFELEC 2010, we're committed to achieving the following targets by 2010:

• Reduce working days lost from work-related injury and ill health by 50%
• Cut the amount of work-related ill health cases by 20%
• Reduce fatal and major injuries by 50%
• Achieve half the improvement under each target by 2004.
  

We also said we would achieve four other occupational health targets:

• To continue to look for better ways to manage work-related stress
• To cut the number of work-related musculo-skeletal disorders by 12% by 2004 and reduce the number of working days lost due to it by 15% by 2004
• To promote the development of better ways to collect occupational health data to get a clearer picture of current levels of work-related illness within the electricity industry
• To develop initiatives to get back to work employees off work because of ill health.
  

We continue to work towards these targets and will soon be able to report the progress we have made.
 

See also

In this report
Health and safety - case study On our website
Powergen health and safety policy