THE Government is to turn to the UK's safety champions in its attempts to improve fleets' safety record. The country's most proactive companies are to be approached to unite to share information on how they have tackled safety through introducing sound risk management strategies that go way beyond just offering driving training courses.

The companies would combine to work within a 'high performance risk group'. Their ideas would be introduced as part of the work being done by the Work Related Road Safety Task Group which has united the Health and Safety Executive, police, Confederation of British Industry and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents to consider how health and safety law can be used to reduce the number of work-related road accidents.

A benchmarking system would be established for use by fleets. The task group has now held its first meeting under the chairmanship of Richard Dykes, group managing director of the Post Office. The idea was revealed by Roger Bibbings, RoSPA occupational safety adviser, at the organisation's recent 'Safety and Health at Work' congress held at the Birmingham NEC. He told Fleet NewsNet: 'One way in which to take ideas forward is to identify the high performers in health and safety and get them to share their experience as a conduit to passing the message on.

'Now the task group is up and running the aim would be to bring together the fleets which have developed a risk management approach to share their experiences with the HSE.' The knowledge would then be passed on as guidance in what could be risk management 'best practice'. The 'safety crusaders' have yet to be identified, but Bibbings envisages they will be about six 'larger companies with significant-sized fleets which have integrated road risk management into their safety policies'.