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A new Worker Involvement campaign is soon to be launched. The ‘do your bit’ initiative will run for a year in total and is aimed at both employers and workers in non-unionised Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) amongst construction, manufacturing and transport/storage industry sectors.
Through Premier Partnership, a third party training provider, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will provide subsidised training on basic knowledge of health and safety management and ’soft’ people skills (negotiating, persuasion etc) to allow course attendees to affect change in their own workplaces.
In addition, there is a fully funded joint training course on offer for managers and representatives from any organisation, aimed at helping to establish a shared perspective towards health and safety management.
The initial campaign will kick off with trade press, a dedicated campaign website including some video case studies and a web tool to help explain how to improve worker involvement for both employers and employees.
But that’s not the end of the story. There will also be an ongoing support function, initially through Infoline, but later using innovative communications channels for hard to reach audiences.
Phase 2 of the campaign, which will start in June, will be aimed at these harder to reach audiences. After a period of 12 months, it is hoped that there will be an extra 2,400 safety representatives in non-unionised SMEs with the necessary support to help them make a real difference for the good.
Please see the "Safe and Sound at Work" campaign website for more information:
As part of the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) Shattered Lives Campaign, you can now request a free copy of the A5 colour 'Danger' display card for your own sector by completing a quick form on the Health and Safety Executive's Shattered Lives campaign website.
The 'Danger' display card can be used to remind your staff of the simple actions that they can take to help prevent slips, trips or falls from height happening in particularly hazardous areas of your workplace. These signs can be used on staff desks, counters and notice boards. Up to five copies of the 'Danger' display card can be requested.
The Daily Mail's Quentin Letts reached the conclusion in Panorama last night that common sense must rule when it comes to protecting people’s health and safety. We at the Health and Safety Executive applaud this sentiment.
'Health and safety' is sometimes used as an excuse to save money or justify unpopular decisions - from banning hanging baskets to Christmas lights. This is a constant frustration to HSE. As Quentin Letts discovered, many of these decisions have little to do with real health and safety regulations.
HSE's work is not about wrapping people in cotton wool, but working with employers to reduce the numbers of families devastated by their loved ones being killed or injured.
With a new structure and style as well as the addition of a number of new features including:
- Improved navigation,
- Safety alerts - related to the industry,
- Focus on - This page provides links to sources of information and guidance on health and safety in the industry,
- Resources - a wide-range of sources to help you improve health and safety,
The Product Authorisation Guide for Application gives further information on product authorisation procedures in the UK.
If you have registration duties under Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation & restriction of CHemicals
(REACH), then you need to know what you should be doing and by when. This leaflet is a starting point to help you understand what you need to do to fulfil these duties.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) today warned employers of waste collectors to ensure their kerbside workers are fully trained to safely assist their drivers to reverse and avoid collision with pedestrians.
The warning follows the death of 35-year-old Stephen Welsh, an East Dunbartonshire Council employee, who was struck and fatally injured by a reversing waste recycling lorry. The accident happened on January 23, 2007 in Smeaton Terrace, Torrance.
East Dunbartonshire Council was fined £13,500 at Glasgow Sheriff Court today (Wednesday 15 April, 2009) after pleading guilty to a charge under Section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work (etc) Act.
The accident happened as the employee, who was working as a waste recycling collector, was run over by the council’s waste recycling lorry during a reversing manoeuvre. The accident happened on a dull and frosty morning about 8.45 am in a cul-de-sac.
HSE Inspector Jean Edgar commented after the case:
"Employers of waste collectors should ensure that their kerbside workers are fully trained to safely assist their drivers to reverse and avoid collision with pedestrians. A safe system of work should be drawn up setting out how communication and control between kerbside collectors and the driver can be reliably achieved. I cannot stress enough, how challenging a work environment the streets of our towns and cities are for this important group of workers and how a simple mistake can have tragic consequences."
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is reminding food processing and manufacturing companies to conduct suitable risk assessments, provide adequate machine guards and properly train operatives called upon to operate or clean machinery. The reminder follows HSE’s prosecution of a company and senior member of its management after a worker was seriously injured.
On 20th April, 2007 a 22yr old employee of Swancote Foods Ltd, of Hortonwood, Telford, was cleaning a conveyor-fed potato processing machine when he received lacerations, bruising and tendon damage to his left forearm and elbow.
Swancote Foods Ltd was, on 31st March, 2009, fined £10,000 and ordered to pay costs of £5,000 by Telford Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to breaching section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.
Edward Davies, a senior manager of the company, was found not guilty of breaching the same section.
The court heard that there was a lack of safety guarding on the machine, which had not been identified by a risk assessment, and the injured worker was inadequately trained and supervised.
HSE inspector David Kivlin said: “Adequate safeguards on moving machinery and safe systems of working should always be in place. Employees had themselves spotted fundamental flaws in cleaning procedures and raised their concerns that insufficient safeguards existed for their protection but senior management did not heed those warnings.
"The worker’s injuries were sufficiently serious to cause some long-term discomfort and adversely affect his work capabilities. The machine should clearly have been properly guarded.
"Particularly in food processing industries the need for strict hygiene through regular cleaning is essential, so safe practices are paramount. Many incidents could be avoided if companies ensured that they had established a safe way of tackling those jobs and ensuring that competent persons are regularly assessing and minimising the associated risks."
The Government published a list of sites that have been accepted into the Strategic Siting Assessment process and that could be potential hosts to a new nuclear power station in the UK.
Lift manufacturers and maintenance companies are reminded of their duties to the safety of staff and the penalties of failing to work safely at height. The warning follows an incident in Lincolnshire where an employee fell 6.5 metres down a lift shaft, resulting in serious injuries.
The UK Lift Company of Blisworth, Northampton, were fined £2,000 and ordered to pay costs of £8,000 at Lincoln magistrates court today (15 April) after pleading guilty to contravening Regulation 4 (1) and Regulation 6(3) (Reg 6(3) is mentioned in the information and the notes to editor) of the Work At Height Regulations 2005 in that they failed to carry out the repair of a school lift safely.
The case arose from an incident at North Kesteven School in Lincolnshire in February last year when the company's assistant site manager, Michael Richards fell 6.5 metres, from the second floor, down the School's lift shaft whilst helping a lift engineer. He suffered serious injuries including a broken pelvis, other broken bones, fractures and ligament damage as a result.
Prosecuting, HSE Inspector Judith McNulty-Green said:
"The injuries Mr Richards suffered were very serious and this incident could have easily been avoided. Working at a lift landing with the landing door open is clearly unsafe, generating a foreseeable risk of a fall. This is made worse by the presence of other people, either assisting or unexpectedly entering the danger zone, particularly in a school where there are pupils in the vicinity.
"Risks of this nature must be managed by carrying out a suitable risk assessment and implementing and enforcing the necessary control measures. Those measures in this case would have ideally been locating the working platform on the second floor or installing barriers and signage.
"Had appropriate control measures been put in place when the lift was being repaired, the injuries could have been avoided.
"Companies are required by the Health and Safety at Work Act and by the Work at Height Regulations to take all reasonable measures to ensure the safety of employees and others that may be affected by that work. The outcome of this incident - the injuries and the subsequent fine - remind us that the results can be serious for people and for businesses that fail to comply"
