• All ScottishPower businesses to attain and maintain OHSAS 18001 standard for health and safety management
• Development of a ScottishPower health and safety database system to align with the IBERDROLA Group business year and providing group wide access to health and safety information
• Continue implementation of behavioural safety programmes in EnergyNetworks and Energy Retail field operations. Begin roll out in Core and refresh existing programme in Energy Wholesale
• Provide ongoing support for the Field Operations Interventions with Large Employers (FOILE) programme to develop, enhance and share best practices for the management of workplace hazards of noise, manual handling and stress

Lost Time Accidents

There were 30 Lost Time Accidents (LTAs) during 2007 – compared to 37 in calendar year 2006. LTA rates are based on all accidents resulting in lost work time (as distinct from the RIDDOR reportable injuries > 3 days). 2007 data now includes Core, which became a 100% owned subsidiary during the year.

Actual Lost Time Accidents

Lost Time Accident Rate per 100 employees

The LTA rate of 0.32 per 100 employees continues the downward trend of recent years.

Work-Related Diseases

Work related ill-health can emerge over many years and is often referred to as the “slow accident.” At ScottishPower we have preventative measures in place to guard against this. Some years ago our occupational hygienists conducted an evaluation of the potential health risks attached to various job roles and used their findings to develop an occupational health risk register. The register includes details of all employees who may be exposed to work-related health hazards such as noise, vibration and chemical substances.

We conduct a comprehensive programme of occupational health surveillance, monitoring all employees on the register, to enable us to detect any signs of ill health at a very early stage.

In recent years the incidence of diseases such as noise-induced deafness has reduced considerably due to health and safety control measures. However, some cases of hand-arm vibration syndrome are still being detected, although in very small numbers.

In 2007 we conducted health monitoring of 2,190 employees on the occupational health risk register.

Behavioural Safety

Energy Wholesale introduced a behavioural safety programme in 2003, which has been successful in reducing the number of accidents and injuries within the business and maintaining high levels of safety awareness among employees and contractors.

The programme involves trained staff conducting safety tours, or behavioural safety audits, where they engage with employees in a positive way about the safety aspects of the job they are doing. Larger sites adopted STOP – the Safety Training Observation Program, using STOP cards – a pro forma checklist, while smaller locations used similar behavioural auditing techniques, but in a less formal way. Energy Wholesale are planning to refresh their programme.

In 2007 EnergyNetworks adopted a behavioural safety programme and Core is planning its implementation. Energy Retail has also begun to introduce safety behavioural techniques into their field operations.

Process Safety

A key focus area in 2007 was examining process safety, following two serious plant failures, which occurred during the year – the collapse of a coal conveyor at Longannet Power Station and of a wind turbine at Beinn an Tuirc Windfarm on the Kintyre peninsula. Fortunately no-one was hurt in either instance and both were fully investigated.

At Longannet an independent Panel of Inquiry was established, which liased closely with representatives of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The wind turbine collapse is currently being examined by representatives of the HSE and the turbine manufacturer to establish the cause of the collapse and prevent a recurrence.

These incidents resulted in a renewed focus on asset management to ensure plant safety and to protect its operational integrity. EnergyNetworks has achieved PAS55 accreditation for asset management and Energy Wholesale hope to meet the standard by summer 2008. New systems are being installed, to provide engineering managers with a much better and clearer overview of the plant and its condition.

Personal Safety and Safety Communication

We continued our all employee communication programme on health and safety using various channels from team meetings and the Intranet, to articles in every issue of our monthly employee newspaper, SP News.

We distributed high visibility ‘Be Safe Be Seen’ vests to employees which should be kept in their cars and used in case of a breakdown during severe weather or when it’s dark.

Company Health and Safety Assessments

Due to a change in our reporting year (from fiscal to calendar year) our report on performance against the company’s 12 Health and Safety Standards has not changed from our 2006/07 Corporate Responsibility Report. This is the latest information available from the last assessment carried out in February 2007.

We are updating our reporting system and from 2008 onwards, we will move to a system of dynamic assessment, where our Safety Champions will collect data throughout the year and a full update will be provided in our 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report.

The assessments against the company’s 12 Health and Safety standards are made by health and safety professionals, using a standard assessment protocol and assessment team including an external independent auditor.

The overall performance assessments for our businesses improved with incremental progression towards the world-class health and safety zone.

All businesses are now ranked in the level 4 zone and the overall company assessment scores showed good improvement in 11 of the 12 standards. Three standards; leadership, information and communication and public safety and stakeholder relationships have achieved level 5 (considered to be world class performance) and significant advances have been made in training and competence, contractor and supplier safety and audit and review.

ScottishPower Best Practice Health and Safety Assessment Results 2006/07

12 Health and Safety Standards

Public Safety

We continued to conduct public safety campaigns during the year with a particular focus on children, construction and agricultural workers and sporting groups, such as anglers.

We launched a campaign to deter thieves from breaking into electricity substations to steal copper cables. This dangerous activity creates serious risks of electrical injury – which can be fatal. During the year we worked with the police to step up patrols at substations. We are also using SmartWater on our equipment, which creates a unique and permanent mark that is visible under UV light, as a further deterrent to thieves.

EnergyNetworks and Energy Retail have undertaken extensive public safety campaigns including school education programmes. In recent years we have implemented a Child Electrical Safety Education programme, supported Fixed Safety Centres in Flintshire, North Wales, Priesthill, Glasgow and a new centre, The Risk Factory in Edinburgh.

For further information on our Public Safety, see our Community Impact.

Occupational Health and Wellbeing

Our occupational health department provides a comprehensive service for health surveillance, treatment and rehabilitation, and promotion of wellbeing. The service appointments provided in 2007 were:

Pre-employment assessments - 1,435
Management referrals - 3,093
Self-referrals - 605
Health Surveillance - 2,190
Physiotherapy - 3,734
Counselling - 3,072
Voluntary health and lifestyle screening - 375

Total appointments - 14,504

Healthy Happy and Here

A Wellbeing Forum was formed in 2007 to integrate the health promotion programmes provided throughout the businesses under a single banner of Healthy, Happy and Here.

The programme operates using calendar month themes. We also launched a Walking Challenge during the year – over 1,200 staff have signed up to wear a pedometer to monitor whether they could achieve the optimum 10,000 steps a day.

A number of awards were achieved across the group for Scotland’s Health at Work (SHAW) health promotion campaign. Energy Wholesale achieved Gold and EnergyNetworks and Energy Retail achieved Silver.

Health and Safety Executive FOILE

We continued to work with the Health and Safety Executive on their FOILE (Field Operations Interventions with large employers) programme. We are undertaking three areas of work, including noise with our Energy Wholesale business, musculoskeletal disorders with EnergyNetworks and workplace stress with Energy Retail.

Absence / Lost days

Days lost due to sickness absence show a mix across the business operations;

Absence levels overall and for most businesses has remained about the same over the period.

The overall group absence rate is typical of that for large employers.
(CBI AXAPPP Workplace Absence Survey 2006)

First Aid Arrangements

A new First Aid Charter was introduced during the year to support first aid arrangements. We continue to benefit from a high level of management commitment to First Aid. We have more than 500 trained First Aiders in the business and each year we hold an internal First Aid competition. The Annual First Aid Conference and Competition was held at Hampden Park in February 2007.

A further 46 new Automatic External Defibrillators (AED’s) in addition to the existing 16, were distributed to all major operational sites and AED training was provided to First Aiders.

Employee Engagement

In addition to our network of Safety Coordinators across the company, we also have union appointed Safety Representatives, who play an active role in our Health and Safety Committees and in raising health and safety awareness in the workplace.

Our annual Safety Reps conference in 2007 was held in May at the SECC and attended by around 250 people, including management representatives from all our businesses. TV journalist, Sally Magnusson hosted the event and speakers included Professor Peter Mackie (ex Chairman Dupont), Gary Lemoine (Director Health and Safety, PPM) and Dr Steve Deacon (ScottishPower Group Medical / Health and Safety Director).

External Engagement

Our health and safety professionals continued to give lectures and presentations through a variety of forums, including RoSPA’s Scottish conference, the Energy Networks Association, the British Wind Energy Association conference and the University of Aberdeen.

Health and Safety Management Systems

Some of our businesses operate health and safety management systems accredited to the standard OHSAS 18001. EnergyNetworks and Core operate OHSAS accredited systems. Energy Wholesale, Energy Retail and the corporate centre are working towards obtaining accreditation.