As an international high speed rail operator carrying millions of passengers we take safety extremely seriously. Safety is, and always will be, our first priority. Our customers need to have complete confidence that they will arrive at their destination safely and our colleagues and partners need to know that they can carry out their duties without fear or harm to their health, safety or wellbeing.
Delivering high standards of health and safety management requires constant vigilance and commitment of our teams and partners, supported by a disciplined, rigorous approach to everything that we do.
At Eurostar we work hard to ensure a safe and secure environment for our customers, colleagues and partners. It is critical, however, that we never allow ourselves to become complacent and we must continually strive to deliver improvements to our safety performance.
To ensure that we challenge ourselves and continually improve our safety performance we are committed to:
At the heart of our commitment to safety is our Safety Management Group (SMG).
The SMG is the senior cross-functional group within Eurostar that is dedicated all aspects of health and safety. It is chaired by an independent safety specialist with over twenty years in senior safety roles in the rail industry.
The SMG membership also includes Eurostar’s CEO, Chief Operating Officer and Head of Safety as well as other key managers within the business.
The remit of the SMG, which meets on a monthly basis, is as follows:
Every year the Board of Eurostar requests an annual independent audit of the company’s safety management system.
In addition to the work of the SMG, we also implement a programme of local, company-wide and independent audits to ensure that we hold ourselves to account and maintain safety as our highest priority.
Safety performance is monitored and proactively reported every week at the Eurostar Management Group meeting which is chaired by the company’s CEO.
Eurostar executive directors also carry out regular safety tours in conjunction with the safety team across the business, ensuring that safety is always front of mind among our people.
We hold an annual safety conference in which our safety performance and future plans are discussed in detail. In addition, colleagues’ experience of safety within Eurostar is measured on an annual basis as part of our all colleague Point de Vue survey.
With these extensive measures in place, we aim to monitor and challenge our performance rigorously to ensure that we continue to build a positive, proactive safety culture.
As a cross-Channel rail operator, Eurostar operates at the highest level of security and has security checks that are similar to those of an airport. We work in close cooperation with the authorities on both sides of the Channel. Both passengers and luggage are scanned prior to departure so that our customers have the peace of mind that they are travelling in highly regulated, safe and secure environment.
With the UK being outside the EU Schengen zone, border controls need to be carried out by immigration authorities. These controls are conducted at the departure terminal by the authorities of the country that the passenger is leaving and directly afterwards by the authorities of the country to which the passenger is travelling. This requires passengers to arrive in advance but allows them to leave the terminal quickly upon arrival.
Image credits: © Eurostar