Ian Prosser, the Office of Rail Regulation’s (ORR’s) director of rail safety, says Britain has one of the safest railways in Europe, but some underlying safety trends warn that there can be no room for complacency.

He was launching the new annual ORR Health and Safety Report, which is a revamped successor to the former HM Railway Inspectorate annual safety reports. It sets out to analyse the state of health and safety across the rail industry in 2009/10, commenting on the performance of Network Rail, passenger train and freight train operators, and London Underground plus Tube Lines.

The ORR says the report defines and cites best practice across the rail industry, highlights areas for attention, and explains the regulator’s role in ensuring the railways continue to be challenged to deliver excellence.

Key findings ORR picks out include:
* Britain’s railways continue to be amongst the safest in Europe – a key international safety indicator, the RSSB’s precursor indicator model for system safety risk to passengers and the public at level crossings, showed an 11.35% improvement in 2009/10.
* Worker safety is improving, but there are concerns about track worker safety – the past year was marked by three worker fatalities, and safety in terms of overall harm got worse last year.
* Significant concerns about the reporting of minor injuries within Network Rail and its contractors.
* Despite a positive overall picture on passenger safety, the short-term trend on ‘passenger harm’ is up – main line railway overall passenger harm went up for the first time in seven years; this trend is dominated by injuries at stations.
* The industry needs to raise its game on occupational health – there are significant gaps in the information that the industry holds on occupational health.