Executive summary
Date(s) of inspection:
May 2025
Aim of inspection
This inspection was targeted at testing how the licensee is managing the risks of workplace transport during the statutory outage at Hartlepool. HSE publications HSG 136 ‘A guide to workplace transport safety’, HSG 144 'Safe use of vehicles on construction sites', and L153 ‘Managing Health and Safety in Construction’ were used as the benchmark relevant good practices to determine how risks associated with workplace transport were managed so far as is reasonably practicable, in particular how risks to pedestrians from vehicles on the licenced site were managed.
Subject(s) of inspection
- CDM 15 - Rating: Not rated
- Workplace Transport - Rating: Green
Key findings, inspector's opinions and reasons for judgement made
This inspection targeted how workplace transport was managed by EDF Nuclear Generation Limited (NGL) at their Hartlepool site. The inspection involved a day on site reviewing the Workplace Transport Assessment and visiting those areas on site that the assessment identified as high risk. Workplace traffic was targeted as an area to focus on as: during outages personnel and vehicle movements on site increase, and there had been issues previously highlighted at Hartlepool in relation to workplace transport.
Those areas that were walked down included (but were not limited to):
- Road 1 – pedestrian access to West side of the turbine hall;
- Walkway adjacent to FME cabin;
- Road 15 - South Side of N.G.C Switch House;
- Road 8 – Contractor Outage cabins; and
- The outside storage area.
These areas were prioritised to be visited because Hartlepool had identified these as high risk areas within their risk assessment. On reviewing the workplace transport assessment it was not clear what mitigations, if any, had been put in place in these areas. However the site walkdown confirmed that mitigations had been put in place to reduce the risk.
Where control measures were in place there was evidence that these were not always observed by individuals on site. This is an area that Hartlepool should address.
Conclusion
EDF NGL were able to demonstrate that they have undertaken significant work on the workplace transport risk assessment in preparation for the outage. They were also able to demonstrate that they had taken actions to control/mitigate the high risk areas on site in preparation for the statutory outage. The most effective demonstration of this was the closure of the road between contactors welfare cabins. This was something that had not happened during previous outages.
There were areas that still required attention, primarily where personnel on station were not following designated walkways and therefore potentially putting themselves at risk.
Some minor shortfalls were identified with respect to the onsite storage area. However, given the progress that the site transport team had made in a short amount of time in securing improvements to workplace transport more widely, I am satisfied that improvements in that specific area can be followed up through routine regulatory engagements.