Openreach and CityFibre Secure Key RoSPA Safety Awards for 2023
Network operators CityFibre and Openreach, both of which are deploying full fibre broadband ISP networks at pace across the United Kingdom, have today secured a series of wins at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) Awards 2023.
Firstly, CityFibre has been recognised for the third year running by demonstrating its dedication to ensuring its staff and build partners operate in a safe environment. In previous years the operator received the Gold Achievement Award and this year has won the Highly Commended Award in the Industry Sector category.
Meanwhile, Openreach scooped three RoSPA Awards, demonstrating its commitment to health and safety. The operator came out on top in the following categories of the RoSPA awards:
Advertisement
· Information & Communication Industry Sector Award
· Fleet Safety
· Best New Entry
Sarah Parsons, Director of Compliance at CityFibre, said:
“CityFibre is continuing its nationwide rollout at a phenomenal pace, but that pace has not come at the sacrifice of the health, safety and wellbeing of those on the frontline and indeed it is paramount to what we want to achieve.
We are delighted to once again be recognised by our peers with this prestigious award, which is a testament to the continued hard work and commitment of our colleagues. We urge the wider industry to lean in and contribute to the SHiFT Group, the first body of its kind with the goal of improving health and safety standards industry-wide.”
Mark Whitley, Safety Director for Openreach, said:
“Safety without doubt is our number one priority at Openreach.
The work we’ve been doing across the board to ensure that colleagues can return home safely to their families at the end of a working day is paramount and winning these prestigious RoSPA awards is recognition of that.
To further improve our safety culture, we introduced our “Everyone Home Safe and Well” strategy along with our dedicated Hearts & Minds safety culture training for all Openreach employees, which is helping us to continue to embed our lifesaving rules and everyday safety behaviours across our business.”
At the time of writing the RoSPA has not yet updated their website to reflect the full list of award winners, thus there may well be others in the same sector that deserve a mention and we just have not spotted them.
Advertisement
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« Summary of ISP Choices on CityFibre’s UK FTTP Broadband Network
Is this the same Openreach as in the space of a few days I saw:
Driving erratically on M1 whilst on phone in OR van
Tailgating on M1 before cutting over to M62 turn off in OR van
Driving on M6 with illegal cable trailer behind OR van
Opening cable chamber to install fibre with no gas test
Running fibre across drives and down private path whilst installing fibre
The above show more of a culture of we are above H&S not setting an example as per RoSPA awards. Perhaps I should send them the details and suggest they’ve been mislead?
I take all these kind of awards with a pinch of salt, as with the ISPA awards/booze up.
Top marks to Cityfibre for improvement, given that six years ago they were here:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/04/cityfibre-fined-35k-serious-failures-road-works-safety-scotland.html
Well done Openreach on reducing number of accidents using very simple but effective methods of either just not installing fibre in areas that really need decent broadband speeds especially with many new homes being built or simply not rushing installing new fibre.
Having seen the city fibre builds in Southend when visiting recently it was shocking to see their health and safety….. or lack of it! Im pretty sure they should be using guarding around their cables when laying on the ground or at least a helmet when working in a road .
I travel all around the country so i occasionally see these builds taking place and i have to say whenever i have seen openreach working they are always very visible and in comparison to most of the other fibre companies seem to operate the safest so its good that some of this has been recognised with these awards
Really? This was Cityfibre on BBC news after a blind last nearly fell down a trench!
https://youtu.be/L1G4pcV8Gj0
Yes and that was only a few months ago.
I see it was actually posted on YouTube by an MP.
Standard city fibre working practices across the UK it seems
Kind of makes a mockery of the award doesn’t it.
received an email from openreach a few weeks ago saying due to a few problems in you half of your street we have decided not to install fibre at this time
What does that have to do with this news story?