Safety is critical both to business performance and to helping to define the culture of the Company for our employees. We recognise that our operations potentially give rise to risk and that some of our assets could have catastrophic consequences to surrounding communities if not properly controlled.

We believe we can eliminate or minimise those risks to achieve zero injuries or harm and to safeguard members of the public. We further believe that everyone in National Grid, collectively and individually, has a part to play in achieving this.

Operating major hazard sites and pipelines means managing process safety risks is always a prime consideration in the way we run our business. We aspire to be an industry leader in this area.

Employee safety

We report our employee lost time injury frequency rate, expressed as lost time injuries per 100,000 hours worked, as a key measure that can be compared with other companies. This takes into account the number of employees and the hours worked. As well as reporting our lost time injury frequency rate, we also report the number of lost time injuries.

Following a significant reduction in lost time injury frequency rate from 0.25 in 2008/09 to 0.15 in 2009/10, this year saw a slight deterioration, although most of the gains made in the previous year have been sustained. At the end of 2010/11, lost time injury frequency rate was 0.18 and the number of lost time injuries was 96 compared with 86 in 2009/10.

The principal causes of lost time injuries were road traffic collisions, musculoskeletal injuries and slips, trips and falls.

This year has seen a range of programmes implemented to improve performance in these areas including: installing cameras in our vehicles in the US to enable better investigation of road traffic collisions; running safe driving workshops in conjunction with local police forces in the UK; sharing good practice from the US soft tissue injury prevention programme to develop a similar programme in the UK looking at ergonomic assessment; early referral of injury to physiotherapists; and rehabilitation of people with long-term injuries.

However, lost time injury frequency rate only shows part of the picture and we measure a range of other KPIs internally to ensure we control our safety risks. This year has seen particular emphasis on high potential incidents. These are typically the near misses that do not result in harm, but have the potential for serious injuries. Examples include: dropped loads, vehicles overturning, contact with overhead electrical conductors and damaging underground cables. Distinguishing these incidents in terms of potential severity has allowed us to use novel ways to communicate learning to our workforce, such as publishing a ‘red top’ style newspaper featuring the stories of people involved in the incidents. It also provides the focus on developing campaigns to improve performance before people get hurt.

Definitions for lost time injury and lost time injury frequency rate are included in the glossary.