• Swindon & Wiltshire News
• Wednesday January 5 2022
• Author Name: Peter Davison

Hills starts the year with a health and safety focus

Staff at Swindon-based aggregates firm Hills have started the year with a focus on health and safety.

For the seventh year in a row, Hills Quarry Products delayed the opening of all its sites to allow employees to participate in a morning of Health and Safety briefings.

Hills’ focus for 2022 is increasing employee knowledge and participation in the following areas:

• Hazard and near-miss reporting
• Risk assessment and safe working procedures
• Contractor management and permit to work
• Training and worker participation
• Traffic management

This follows a comprehensive year of training in 2021 which focused on communicating the ‘Fatal 6’ in collaboration with the Mineral Products Association of which Hills Quarry Products is a member.

Peter Andrew, group director at Hills Quarry Products, said: “Taking time on our return to work to remind employees of the importance of everyone’s Health and Safety at our sites is very important to us.”

“The safety briefings include a review of our achievements over the past year and setting new Health and Safety targets which are based on both feedback from employees and independent Health and Safety auditors.”

Gavin Caruana, health and safety support manager at Hills Quarry Products said: “This safety briefing demonstrates Hills’ commitment to promoting and achieving high standards of health and safety and to ensure this remains top priority in everything that we do.”

The safety briefings were held across operational sites in Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, and Dorset where Hills operate sand and gravel quarries and ready-mixed concrete production plants.

Pictured: A socially distanced briefing to the team at Shorncote Quarry near Cirencester