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NEWS RELEASE 12th May 2009 National Food Retail Chain Opts for SAFEcontractor

A major national safety accreditation scheme is growing at record levels, with more than 130 well-known names now signed up to the scheme to manage their health and safety risks, including one of the UK’s most respected food retail brands.

Food retail giant Greggs has joined SAFEcontractor to help manage contractors working across its sites in the UK.

Against the background of toughening UK legislation, more companies are realising the benefits of joining the SAFEcontractor scheme to vet external companies carrying out work on their premises.

The flagship scheme is used by some of the UK’s largest corporations to manage health and safety risks when employing contractors at thousands of workplaces across the country. Major firms with multiple workplaces use the scheme’s database to select contractors they can be confident will adhere to high safety standards.

It has also become a key business development tool for contractors themselves, who are eager to demonstrate their safety credentials to potential clients.

Newcastle-Upon-Tyne based Greggs has more than 1400 retail outlets across the UK and was looking for a means of monitoring local contractors from their head-office without having to go through a rigorous qualification process each time.

Group Safety Health & Environmental Manager at Greggs, Steve Peat, said: “As a business we grew extremely quickly and soon found our original system of selecting contractors was no longer suitable. The main reason we opted for SAFEcontractor is that, unlike many other third party accreditation schemes, it isn’t sector specific and is transferrable between different disciplines. This suits us perfectly as we employ contractors of all types from shop fitters to IT consultants.

“The main benefit of the scheme for us is that we have our own dedicated section of the SAFEcontractor database which includes only contractors that meet our own additional criteria, which includes factors such as insurance levels and specific policies and procedures. We tend to use the database as a phone directory of contractors that we can employ without having any extra concerns about their health and safety procedures – it really has taken the headache out of this aspect of my job and we can now concentrate on management of contractors on site rather than the actual selection process.”

The SAFEcontractor accreditation is recognised increasingly as the hallmark of a safe and well-run operation and achieving the standard also improves the credentials of contractors when bidding for new business.

Those contractors found by SAFEcontractor auditors to have demonstrated consistently safe standards are listed on an approved database which is made available to clients like Greggs via the Internet.

Darran Hughes, Operations Director for SAFEcontractor said: “Increasingly stringent legislation that puts large organisations in the firing line for any health and safety breeches within their business has led to a large number of companies taking extra diligence over how they vet their contractors.

“The fact that companies such as Greggs use contractors from a variety of sectors demonstrates the versatility of SAFEcontractor and shows how it can benefit businesses and contractors working across all disciplines.”

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For more information contact Caroline Holmes at Working Word PR on 02920 646 840 / 07786642881 or email caroline.holmes@workingwordpr.com