Top health & safety scores for Bannon managed property: Athlone Town Centre
With Bannon being the largest managing agent of retail properties in the country and welcoming over 100 million people to our various schemes on an annual basis, health and safety is paramount on our list of priorities. Since 2016, Bannon has worked in partnership with health and safety consultants SeaChange Ltd.
SeaChange conducts annual audits across the Bannon property management portfolio. The work involves a risk assessment along with the preparation of a safety statement. Each site adopts the SeaChange Slip, Trip and Fall Prevention system and has access to the SeaChange client portal to track safety KPIs.
Among our properties, Athlone Town Centre has consistently excelled through this rigorous process. Achieving a high score necessitates hourly checks, contributing to an outstanding compliance rate of 92%. In 2023, nearly 6,000 checklists were completed, showcasing remarkable dedication from the onsite team in safeguarding all visitors and staff at Athlone Town Centre.
Thanks to these concerted efforts, Bannon has observed the lowest number of recorded incidents in the centre since it opened 17 years ago. This dedication has resulted in Athlone Town Centre being one of the top scoring shopping centres in the country with an annual SABRE audit score of 4.1 out of 5. The SABRE audit is carried out once a year and the benchmark for safety culture.
The centre manager Shirley Delahunt comments ‘As a team, we have been using the SeaChange system in Athlone Towncentre for the last number of years. Despite reservations at the outset that this would add an additional administrative layer, seeing the SeaChange system in operation we quickly realised how agile and intuitive it was and how it could be used to complement and enhance the processes in place.
The introduction of the SeaChange system and use of the app gave us a structure within the area of Health and Safety that we previously lacked. As a team, we have tailored the SeaChange system to our site-specific requirements, using it to monitor all elements of health and safety as well as creating bespoke checklists and patrol requirements for the site. The ease of use of the SeaChange app and portal has really assisted us in securing buy-in from all team members on-site. It has meant that health and safety within the site has now become the responsibility of everyone as opposed to a few. The reporting function allows us to continually monitor our performance and clearly identify any areas of deficiency.’
Athlone Town Centre consistently scoring a Gold rating on an annual basis is a testament to the team on the ground. We, at Bannon, are immensely proud of our onsite team and their continuous dedication to this cause on a daily basis.
Author: Brian Geraghty, Surveyor, Bannon
Date: 8th April 2024
