Working on the Soft Fruit Farm

Health and Safety on the farm

At HHP we are serious about looking after the health, safety and well-being of our farm workers. We subscribe to an annual independent ethical audit to ensure that we comply with all staff welfare statutory requirements.

We are continually assessing the risks of all our equipment and are doing everything possible to avoid incidents on all our sites.

Following a tragic accident on Sheeplands Farm in 2002, we commissioned a thorough review of all our farm equipment and sponsored research on making winches ‘safer by design’. The recommended designs have since been used by the UK Government’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in a Hazard Bulletin issued to the UK horticultural industry.

HHP has implemented a rigorous safety training programme in four languages for all its employees, introduced an incident reporting system and regularly carries out risk assessments.

We have sponsored several health and safety initiatives including:

  • A four-day examinable safety training course for managers called ‘Managing Safely in Horticulture’. The course, run by the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, is made available to the industry and is used on farms across the UK and Europe.
  • Eleven different safety videos on fruit farming. These have been translated into Russian, Polish and Bulgarian, and distributed to 20 farms in the UK. They are available to any farmer who may want to use them.
  • Two safety handbooks on soft fruit production, also in four languages. These are circulated to specific staff members and the 20 farms who are using the videos (above).
  • Created and implemented two benchmarking systems to improve safety performance at HHP and at other organisations in the UK.
  • Formation of the Southern Benchmarking Group together with two engineering companies. This allows HHP to benchmark against standards in other industries and share best practice.

HHP training consists of both in-house and sourced training. The partnership won the first agriculturally based National Training Award and Harry Hall was named Soft Fruit Grower of the Year in 2002.