12.05.2004

Health and Safety Executive under attack

It Seems that everyone has it in for the HSE this week, Kevin Curran General Secretary of the GMB, Britain’s General Union, claimed the current (UK) regulatory system simply isn’t working and accused the HSE of being “complacent, spending too much time on targets and not enough on inspections and enforcement” On top of this the National Audit office said that the HSE is likely to miss its construction industry target to reduce accidents by 60 percent by 2010.

So why are the Health and Safety in the spotlight? The House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee Inquiry into the work of the Health and Safety Commission and Executive, is taking evidence at the moment so politics come into the equation.

Curran, General Secretary of the 650,000 strong GMB union,
speaking prior to giving evidence before the select committee said “The current regulatory system is simply not working, yet the HSE’s new strategy document claims that they ‘have done a great job on safety’. The GMB is calling for the establishment of an effective enforcement agency dedicated to rooting out and punishing employers who put profit before life and limb”.

The union has submitted written evidence to the Select Committee Inquiry documenting its concerns about the Health and Safety Commission and Executive. These include: the recently published HSC strategy; HSE resources; the HSE’s focus on ‘goal-setting’ regulations; the lack of support for tripartite Advisory Committees and HSE enforcement policy.

Curran continued, “We welcome this inquiry and the opportunity it presents for a serious debate about health and safety enforcement in the modern economy. The nature of work has changed significantly since the Health and Safety Commission and Executive were established. But what hasn’t changed is the need to enforce health and safety laws effectively, and the HSE should spend less time goal-setting and focus more on ensuring that regulations give workers adequate protection.”

In an unrelated incident The National Audit Office has warned that the construction industry is unlikely to meet its target for cutting deaths and major injuries by 60 per cent by 2010.

The NAO has drawn up a report on improving health and safety in the construction industry, which it says, has a fatality and serious accident rate more than three times the average for other key industries. It claims that the industry itself and government organisations such as the HSE ``could do more'' to improve the health and safety of workers.

The number of deaths and injuries has declined by 5 per cent since 2001, but the NAO today said that this is not enough to meet the target. The report also called on the Health and Safety Executive to improve the way it assesses its own campaigns to improve safety.

Auditor General Sir John Bourn said: “Construction workers have some of the most dangerous jobs in the UK economy. I welcome the recent reduction in the incidence rate of deaths and major injuries. But further and sustained improvements in the health and safety performance of the industry are required.”


Vertikal Comment

A huge percentage of the 70 odd fatalities and over 4,000 serious injuries each year in Construction are caused by falls from height, while great strides have been made in the past few years, there is still a very long way to go. UK contractors, especially smaller companies and sub contractors, have been slow to replace traditional access methods and rarely invest enough to make sure that powered access is readily to hand throughout a contract.

All too often too few machines are hired, or units are returned at every possibly juncture to save on the total rental cost ..(Free or cut-price delivery and collection from hire companies does not help with this): Thus when a quick or last minute job at height needs doing and an aerial lift is not ready to hand.. Risks are taken: less safe alternatives are used and that is just when accidents are most likely to occur.

Calling for more enforcement and more resources, is easy and to some extent a cop out, when are there ever enough resources? As with quality you cannot inspect safety in, it must come from the people doing the job, good training certainly helps with this.

The UK already has one of the toughest inspection regimes in the EU and most certainly the most rules, but all too much of it focuses on being seen to follow highly prescriptive rules such as wearing bright yellow jackets, hard hats and boots at all times and fretting over extra rear view mirrors on machinery instead of encouraging a real safety culture, checking that access methods being used are truly the safest or best suited for the job, or that operators are properly trained etc.

The net result tends to be that many site workers see the HSE and safety officer as being impractical, over fussy and sometimes totally stupid! We have all heard annecdotes or seen the headlines from time to time concerning ridiculous, so called, safety rulings. These often impractical edicts or inspection demands for clearly irrelevant requirements on specific jobs, distracts, undermines and brings genuine safety effrorts into disrepute.

The GMB union would do better to help drum practical safety consciousness into their members and help increase the awareness of safe methods of working at height etc..