Health and safety

Health and safety is one of our 4 core values.

It means caring for our workforce, communities along the route, future passengers and public, and also setting new industry standards, and finding innovative solutions. We want to set the bar higher than ever before and create an environment where no one gets hurt.

Safe at heart

Safe at heart brings together and represents everything we aim to achieve in health, safety and wellbeing at HS2 throughout the life cycle of the project. It sets out our:

• responsibilities as an industry leader and responsible client;
• expectations of all who work for and with HS2;
• caring approach to our workforce, neighbours and public; and
• commitment to giving health equal status to safety.

You can read our health and safety policy to find out more.

Our 7 focus areas

We organise our health and safety commitments around 7 focus areas:

• workforce safety
• public and neighbour health and safety
• workforce health and wellbeing
• safe by design
• safe supply chain management
• safe operations
• SMART assurance (management systems)

You can find out more about these 7 focus areas in our health and safety approach.

The health and safety of our neighbours

We don’t underestimate the impact HS2 will have on our many neighbours and their environment along the route. It’s one of our 10 community commitments to make health and safety a priority for our communities and our workforce.

Working with our supply chain and our neighbours we will address health, safety, wellbeing and environmental concerns and needs with sensitivity by:

• gaining understanding of the issues and building trust through our community health and safety champions whose role is to ensure community safety is our first consideration at every stage of the project;
• investing in the communities where we work to minimise the impact on local health services;
• making sure the effects of noise, light, dust, pollution and traffic are controlled and reduced in line with the Code of Construction Practice; and
• paying particular concern to the health, safety and wellbeing of vulnerable members of the community, including those whose physical and mental wellbeing may be impacted.

If you have concerns about health, safety and wellbeing in your area please contact our helpdesk. Find out how we work with communities in our community engagement strategy.

The health and safety of our workforce

Thousands of people will be working on the design and construction of HS2. We will protect their right to return home safe, well and unharmed at the end of every day by ensuring:

• all of our workforce are trained, skilled and competent to do their jobs safely every time and wherever they work;
• our leaders always make health and safety their first consideration;
• we work with our supply chain to make innovative use of technology in minimising health and safety risk during design and construction;
• we demonstrate health and wellbeing matter as much as safety by setting new standards for occupational health; and
• key health risks are eliminated or minimised during design.

Working with our supply chain

We’re working with world-class partners who share our values, commitment to outstanding health and safety and core belief that everyone has the right to go home unharmed.

The experience, skills, professionalism and innovation our supply chain brings to health and safety is critical to the success of HS2. We will empower all of our suppliers – large and small – to exceed existing norms and make sure we’re all continuously focused on our goal to create a railway designed, built and operated to the highest health, safety and security standards.

We have set out our core expectations of our suppliers in our supply chain health and safety approach. You can read this and access other resources specific to the supply chain in our learning library.