New health, safety and wellbeing chief joins Lanes Group plc

Drainage and wastewater service specialist Lanes Group plc has appointed Keith Stableford to be its Head of Health Safety Environment and Quality.

Stableford has more than 30 years’ experience leading on health, safety and compliance in large businesses across multiple sectors.

He has held director and head of health and safety roles for major companies working in the construction, infrastructure, facilities management and rail engineering industries.

Lanes Managing Director Kevin Moon said: “Keith brings a huge amount of experience to Lanes in sustaining and continuously developing high performance health, safety and wellbeing cultures in large and diverse organisations like ours.

“We align our processes and standards with those of other national and international businesses operating across many different industrial and commercial sectors.

“I’m confident Keith is going to play a significant role in continuing to do this and successfully develop our health, safety and wellbeing systems in line with our plans for growth. The Lanes board is looking forward to giving him our full support.”

Stableford has taken over from Paul McParland, who has retired as Group Health, Safety, Environment and Quality Manager, a role he had held since 2015.

Heading up Lanes’ national HSEQ team based in Eccles, Greater Manchester, he is now working with health and safety colleagues in divisions across the company to protect Lanes teams, clients and the public and set the highest possible quality standards across the company’s operations.

Stableford said: “Lanes is a rapidly expanding and fast-changing business, delivering services that have a unique range of significant risks that need one hundred per cent of our attention every minute of the day.

“This makes our work professionally challenging but very interesting in equal measure. Lanes has a strong reputation for its health and safety standards and innovation which I want to develop further still.

“I see one of my key roles as enabling that expertise – and the culture behind it – to be shared throughout the group and our supply chain, so everyone goes home safe every day as the business continues to develop.”

Lanes Group is the UK’s largest independent drainage and wastewater services provider. Its services include sewer cleaning and unblocking, sewer and industrial pipe lining, and wastewater tankering.

It delivers wastewater network maintenance services for many of the UK’s largest water companies, and operates one of the UK’s fastest-growing broadband infrastructure companies.

The company holds the RoSPA Gold Achievement Award for occupational health and safety and has won numerous other national awards for its innovative approaches to health, safety and wellbeing.