Winter gritting and maintenance services provider GRITIT is warning businesses to put a winter risk management strategy in place as the number of claims for personal injuries rises.

The number of people across the UK making claims for personal injuries over the winter months has increased by 23% over the past four years, according to figures from the Compensation Recovery Unit of the Department for Work and Pensions – winter months of November to March 2012.

Reports suggest that this upward trend is expected to continue and GRITIT advises businesses to take mitigating action.

Nikki Singh-Barmi, managing director of GRITIT, said: “The law places responsibility on employers and owners or occupiers to ensure that premises are maintained to a level that reduces the risk of injury. Anything hazardous, such as snow and ice, must be removed.

“At GRITIT we’ve spent all summer planning and getting ourselves, our equipment and – more importantly – our clients ready for what may lie ahead. The importance of ‘getting it right’ or being as accurate as you can be when it comes to business planning for snowfall and icy conditions, cannot be underestimated.”

GRITIT partners with Masternaut

GRITIT has recently partnered with Masternaut to help guarantee legal compliance for its customers in the private and public sectors, including major retailers, offices, the NHS and schools.

It undertakes 100,000 service visits, on average, across the UK during the winter and has chosen to fit Masternaut telematics to its 200 gritting vehicles.

The Masternaut system is used as a source of accountability for GRITIT’s customers and front-line employees as the vehicle tracking provides proof of attendance, leading to a reduced number of complaints against scheduled gritting jobs.

As Masternaut is able to confirm a vehicle’s location for its clients, drivers won’t face the need to frequently return to the depot, providing the platform to service additional customers via live real-time job scheduling.

Masternaut’s business intelligence solution has also led to an increased awareness of driver safety. Control room managers can now take immediate action without driver input, based solely on the strength of data feedback.

Compatibility with GRITIT's reporting and job scheduling system was essential. GRITIT uses a corporate weather forecasting service provided by MeteoGroup that has 97.67% accuracy in short-term forecasting. The weather reports are entered into a unique web-based system for  management of UK-wide commercial gritting operations.

Masternaut’s system ensures the right vehicles are sent to suitable locations, creating greater job efficiency.

Masternaut uses GPS to track the gritters, with the information automatically transmitted via GPRS so that the position of the vehicle can then be recorded. This information is available to the gritting managers in real-time for accurate reporting or incident management. A daily report is also delivered by email for historical monitoring. Accumulating and securely storing this information allows GRITIT to create a legally compliant audit trail providing details as to the location of any vehicle within the fleet, at any given time.