Drainage and wastewater specialist Lanes Group plc has been awarded a Gold Achievement Award in the RoSPA Health and Safety Awards 2022.

The RoSPA Awards are among the most prestigious health and safety awards in the world, with organisations from the UK and more than 50 other countries entering each year.

Lanes Managing Director Kevin Moon said: “This success has been made possible by the hard work of our health and safety teams across all our divisions, plus the daily actions of every single colleague to maintain safe workplaces and worksites, and I thank them for their efforts.

“A strategic aim at Lanes is to continuously improve our health and safety systems and performance. Achieving consecutive RoSPA Gold Awards is a clear indication we’re meeting the challenge we’ve set for ourselves.”

The RoSPA Awards are designed to be a rigorous test of an organisation’s health, safety and wellbeing policies, procedures and standards. Only those that can consistently demonstrate the highest performance levels achieve a RoSPA Gold Award.

Lanes submitted detailed evidence and data about every aspect of occupational health, safety and wellbeing, including leadership, training, staff engagement, risk assessment, incident monitoring, and investigation.

The award related to activity during 2021 and the first part of 2022. This was a challenging period when the country was transitioning out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, there was a detailed section in the submission requiring detailed information about measures to safeguard and support colleagues, customers, and the public as the pandemic came to an end.

Keith Stableford, Lanes Group Head of Health, Safety, Environment and Quality, said: “As a company delivering critical commercial and public services, the pandemic was a test for Lanes like no other it’s ever experienced.

“Achieving RoSPA Gold once again shows our systems were robust enough to cope. However, we’re not complacent. Our aim is to push on and improve still further, building a strong health, safety and wellbeing culture, ready for the next big challenge.”

Lanes is the largest independent drainage and wastewater maintenance specialist in the UK, delivering services from 36 depots and service hubs across the country. It is marking its 30^th anniversary in 2022.

Customers range from householders and small businesses to the UK’s largest corporations and public bodies, including Network Rail, Transport for London (TfL), Thames Water, Severn Trent, Northumbrian and Scottish Water.

In its RoSPA Awards submission, the company could point to a series of new initiatives in 2021 and 2022 focussed on key health, safety and wellbeing priorities, including manual handling, road safety and mental health.

They included the setting up of a new steering group of senior managers to review health, safety and wellbeing activity across the depot network and advise support the development of strategic responses. A new Serious About Safety auditing system was also introduced.

The company also launched a £7.7million fleet investment programme for its Thames Water operation. This has included the roll-out of the UK’s most advanced service vans, with innovative features to reduce manual handling risks and improve operative wellbeing.

The Lanes Rail Division also further developed a unique work support app, based in the Teamleaf platform, which includes new point of works risk assessment functions, training records and pop-up alerts for managers on safety-critical activities.

Lanes Group: www.lanesfordrains.co.uk