Health and safety

The safety of our customers and employees is our top operational priority. We have structures, checks and initiatives in place to cover every aspect of this vital activity.

For more details, see our full health and safety policy

Management

Our safety practices are reviewed regularly by the Board Safety Committee.

Compliance auditing

Each group business is accountable for its own safety performance, and follows self-certification and self-auditing processes which reflect best practice.

As part of the self-certification process, Arriva managers conduct annual reviews of their business to ensure that they meet group safety standards. The reviews are subject to external verification. This process ensures that safety is regularly reviewed by senior management.

Training

We have an extensive portfolio of in-house training initiatives, ranging from the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health approved programmes in the UK, to courses in risk assessment, fire safety, display screen equipment, manual handling and first aid.

External initiatives

We were the first public transport company to sign up to the European Road Safety Charter, which aims to achieve a 50 per cent reduction in road accidents by 2010.

Over the past few years, we have won several safety awards:

• The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) gold award for 'Managing Occupational Road Risk'
• The RoSPA merit award for 'Occupational Health and Safety'
• The Institute of Transport and Logistics 'Excellence in Safety' award
• The Brake 'Best Risk Managed Company of the Year' supported by highly commended rankings in the 'Safety in Vehicle Maintenance' and 'Road Safety in the Community' awards

Accreditation

Across our businesses we work to recognised codes and standards. For example, in Denmark, we achieved accreditation under the European Certificate of Working Environment - DS/OH 18001 – for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, at our facilities in Aalborg and Hjørring. We plan to have all facilities in Arriva Scandinavia achieve DS/OH 18001 accreditation by 2009.

Accessibility

We want customers with disabilities to be able to use our services with confidence. We are achieving this in a number of ways:

• UK – As part of their induction, all bus operations employees receive a training manual which gives information on helping passengers with disabilities and special needs. An external consultancy has assessed the accessibility of all our public access properties.
  
  Arriva Trains Wales/Trenau Arriva Cymru operates a Disabled Persons Protection Policy approved by the Department for Transport.
• Germany – Our rail operations actively consult disability groups to help us improve the accessibility of our train services and stations.
• Netherlands and Denmark – Working in partnership with local authorities, we provide demand-response transport for disabled customers.

Arriva across
Europe

View a Flash interactive map of our operations across Europe