The health and safety certification was been granted after nine months of preparation and training, and following an audit carried out by Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance Limited (LRQA).
As part of the assessment, the senior leadership team was required to demonstrate a commitment to health and safety from the top of the organisation and how it was embedded throughout the association.
The housing association manages over 28,000 social housing properties in Sunderland.
Its commercial arm, Gentoo Homes builds more than 200 homes per year for sale, which helps to generate subsidy to support the delivery of more affordable rented homes across the city.
“We’re delighted to be one of the first housing associations to achieve certification to ISO 45001,” said Gentoo’s Head of Health, Safety and Environment, Stephen Flounders.
“Health and safety plays a key role in everything we do, and we work hard to create a safe working environment for our colleagues and to deliver an outstanding service to our customers,” added Mr Flounders.
“Achieving ISO 45001 demonstrates our commitment to health and safety and we’ll continue to seek opportunities to further raise our high standards”.
The ISO 45001 certificate was introduced in March 2018 and aims to provide a robust and effective set of processes for improving work safety in global supply chains and is also the world’s first International Standard for occupational health and safety.
Designed to help organisations of all sizes and industries, ISO state that the new International Standard is expected to reduce workplace injuries and illnesses around the world.
