Gleaming smiles as Ruthin firm Jones Bros receives first-ever RoSPA gold for high standards of health and safety20th Apr 2009

Ruthin civil engineering firm, Jones Bros, is celebrating a golden spring, having achieved two top awards in close succession.

The family-owned firm has just heard it will be presented with a Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) Gold Award in May.

The news comes only weeks after it was revealed Jones Bros had achieved the highest ever mark in the UK – 94.6 per cent – in the prestigious Civil Engineering Environmental Quality Assessment and Award Scheme (CEEQUAL) for its work building the infrastructure for a £13m business park development at Parc Cybi, Anglesey.

The annual RoSPA awards go to firms that demonstrate outstanding health and safety procedures in the workplace. They are considered to be a mark of excellence by all sectors in industry.

Inspectors look at the full spectrum of an organisation’s activities before allocating one of four categories of award: merit, bronze, silver and gold.

Jones Bros has long been recognised for the quality of its training in the health and safety field and for the past three years has achieved a silver award.

This year it has gone one better to attain its first ever gold.

Jones Bros health and safety advisor, Diane Guidera, from Rhewl, said everyone at the company was delighted: “We missed out on the gold by a whisker last year, scoring 20 in the assessment when 21 or more was needed for a gold, so this year we made a determined effort to make it into the top bracket.

“It is a great achievement for all the employees and everyone here who works hard to ensure we attain the very highest levels of health and safety in all areas of work.

“This is not just a cosmetic achievement but a much valued award in practical terms. It has real and practical benefits for the welfare of everyone who works on a Jones Bros site.”

RoSPA Gold Award winners have to achieve a very high level of performance, demonstrating well-developed occupational health and safety management systems and culture, outstanding control of risk and very low levels of error, harm and loss.

Jones Bros Managing Director, Huw Jones, said: “The achievement of this gold award is testament to the commitment of employees to good health and safety practices. Each of the sites we work on around the UK has its own health and safety challenges, from working alongside moving traffic to resurface a road, to accessing remote hillsides for the large windfarm we are building in Scotland.

“It’s through the positive contributions of every employee that we have achieved such a prestigious award.”