Health and safety

The issue: The health and safety of everyone who comes into contact with our operations is of paramount importance. This includes our passengers and employees as well as our contractors and business partners. There are many potential hazards associated with airport operations. These vary from slips and falls to the complex procedures involved in moving aircraft, fuel and heavy equipment. Ensuring health and safety in all parts of our operations requires diligent design and planning, rigorous management systems, training and awareness and an open culture in which failures are investigated and lessons shared.

Our approach: Our safety vision is 'protecting the people we care about, now and in the future'. To achieve this, we operate a managing responsibly system to ensure health, safety and security remain a high priority and are central in all key decision making. This robust health and safety management system focuses on the management of risk, training and continually monitoring our work activities. We also recognise that ownership of health, safety and security at every level is essential. Health and safety at the airport is regulated by a number of enforcing authorities including the Health and Safety Executive, Eastleigh Borough Council and Hampshire Fire and Rescue Services.

Our performance: In 2006/07, we reduced injuries to both staff and passengers. This has been achieved through:

• The Managing Responsibly Board – an internal group which reviews health, safety security and environmental issues every month
• Mandatory safety training – annual training for all staff, which we extend to our partners who work on-site
• Review and update of all risk assessments across the airport
• Enhanced occupational health provision for staff
• Monitoring safe aircraft turnarounds – we regularly undertake turnaround checks of aircraft, monitoring adherence to safety
• Regular Health, Safety, Security and Environmental (HSSE) audits including an internal HSSE audit conducted across all BAA airports, an internal business continuity management audit and an external insurance audit
• Regular inspection of tenants’ and contractors’ HSSE procedures.

Going forward: We will continue to focus on delivering a safe environment for our passengers and staff.