HSE announces that those managing health on construction sites poorly will ‘feel the full force of the law’.

As predicted this will be the year of the health section of the Health and Safety at Work Act and HSE are making a concerted effort to cover these issues.  Interestingly this series of visits will be across the whole of the UK rather than just one isolated area which would have been typical of more recent construction blitzes.

What should be your next step?

If I was a construction site manager I would be checking anything related to health and this means;

• Staff taking adequate precaution with general dusts
• Dust masks being face fitted
• Dust masks being stored in bags or boxes to keep them clean when not in use
• Good hygiene before meal and natural breaks
• Health surveillance under R11 of COSHH (dermatitis / respiratory)
• Contact with an occupational health expert (like ourselves) to work with if things escalate
• Good practice when working with lead
• Appropriate impervious gloves when using chemicals
• Respirable Crystalline Silica (RCS)- make sure staff are still using FFP3 makss even if they are using water supression – this is essential.

We hope the above helps.  If you’re already a client then please contact us for more advice and if you’re not yet a client, please give us a call on 01453 800100 for some advice and a competitive cost on closing out all of the issues above.

If you’ve got questions or need support on safety in the industrial, contracting or construction sectors please contact us for sensible and proportionate advice on 01453 800100

Grants & Funding, Through MAS you could access a grant of between £300-£3000 towards your next improvement project… with only a single form

At a recent meeting with the local MAS Advisor we discovered that many of our Safety~net members may be eligible for funding for business development programmes.

Projects in scope include:-

• Lean, 5S, continuous improvement
• Getting systems in place for ISO 9001, 14001 and other industry standards
• Patent search activities
• IPR strategy
• Bespoke staff training as part of addressing a wider business strategy
• Sales and marketing strategy
• Finance
• Consultancy to improve product design
• Design for manufacture and assembly
• Product development consultancy
• Rapid prototyping to support advanced manufacturing
• Material selection
• Subcontract cad design and drafting
• Tooling costs

Grants & Funding

Through MAS you could access a grant of between £300-£3000 towards your next improvement project… with only a single form to complete.

Put simply, this makes it more affordable for you to get your project moving and keep costs to a minimum, ensuring a maximum return on your bottom line.  A standard MAS project will deliver a return of at least 66:1 against your initial investment.

If your company is ambitious with the drive to grow, and you have a project in mind that will increase profits, help secure new contracts or create new jobs, MAS could help you pay for it. And make sure you succeed.

You can even choose your own consultant; with the added assurance of a MAS Advisor to guide you both through the process from start to finish.

http://www.mas.bis.gov.uk/

University launches £4 million fund for South West businesses

Businesses across the South West are set to cash in on a new £4 million funding programme, run by the University of the West of England, Bristol.

Available to both small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large companies, the Innovation 4 Growth scheme will part fund research and development projects with grants of between £25,000 and £150,000.

Financed by the UK government’s Regional Development Fund, it will help businesses develop new or improved products, technologies, processes or services – safeguarding existing, or creating additional, jobs as a result.

Businesses should complete the brief online registration of interest form in the first instance.  An advisor will then contact them within three working days to discuss the potential application and to organise further telephone or face-to-face support, if required.

Applications will be evaluated by a panel of business experts.  There may be a further call after the 10^th March deadline, but this will be dependent on the availability of funds after the initial submission.

Timescales in relation to claiming grants are also short, with all funding having to be issued by the end of the 2014/15 financial year (30^th April 2015).  Eligible costs, however, are broad, and include project staff salaries and expenditure on materials, capital equipment, tooling, training and market assessment.

Further details of the scheme and the registration of interest form can be found at: www.innovation4growth.co.uk

If you’ve got questions or need support on safety in the industrial, contracting or construction sectors please contact us for sensible and proportionate advice on 01453 800100

Please be aware that employers have a legal duty under the Health and Safety Information for Employees Regulations (HSIER) to display the approved poster in a prominent position in each workplace or to provide each worker with a copy of the approved leaflet that outlines British health and safety law.

The 2009 poster displayed opposite replaces the version which was published in April 1999. As well as a download, the 2009 leaflet is available in a more convenient format as a pocket card and replaces the leaflet published in April 1999.

The 1999 versions of the approved poster and leaflet are no longer available for sale, but can still be displayed until 5 April 2014, when the 1999 poster or leaflet must be replaced with the 2009 versions.

Unlike the 1999 poster and leaflet, the 2009 poster and leaflet do not require the employer to provide further information in writing, either on the poster or with the leaflet, giving workers the name and address of the enforcing authority and Employment Medical Advisory Service (EMAS). Instead, workers are advised to go to HSE’s website to find relevant addresses.

The identity of the enforcing authority can be found at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/authority.htm.

If you’ve got questions or need support on safety in the industrial, contracting or construction sectors please contact us for sensible and proportionate advice on 01453 800100

This guidance is aimed at all those involved in commissioning, planning, managing and carrying out work on or near underground services. It will also be of use to the owners and operators of such services. Download a free copy

It outlines the potential dangers of working near underground services and gives advice on how to reduce any direct risks to people’s health and safety, as well as the indirect risks arising through damage to services.

It explains the three basic elements of a safe system of work during excavation:

• Planning the work
• Locating and identifying buried services
• Safe excavation

This third edition brings the guidance up to date, but the basic requirements remain the same.

More and more of our existing clients and many new clients are contacting us to ask about help implementing OHSAS18001.  The reasons are varied depending on the sector but everyone has a common theme of wanting to be able to prove that their safety systems are appropriate and adequate – for insurers, clients and enforcing authorities.

OHSAS is already recognised across Europe and the world and is now going to be fully ratified as a ISO standard (ISO45001).  This is good news for everyone and also means that the standard fits that much more easily with the established standards of ISO9001 and ISO14001.

Read on below to find out a bit more technical detail and if you have any questions or an interest in implementing OHSAS18001 / ISO45001 in your business please use the links below;

contact us on 01453 800100 if you need expert help with health and safety for a fixed cost or use these links to request a proposal;

• Request a call back from one of our consultants
• Request a proposal from us to address an issue or need

ISO/PC 283 is the committee responsible for ISO 45001 and they held their inaugural meeting in London last October. 83 delegates representing 27 member bodies attended and agreed that, as with the recently published ISO 27001 revision, ISO 45001 will fall in line with the Annex SL high-level structure. This will mean the structure of the standard will be:

1. Scope
2. Normative references
3. Terms and definitions
4. Context of the organisation
5. Leadership
6. Planning
7. Support
8. Operation
9. Performance evaluation
10. Improvement

Moving forward, the committee established a plan for the development and publication of the standard:

• ISO/CD 45001 (first committee draft) to be published by May 2014;
• ISO/DIS 45001 (first draft international standard) to be published by February 2015;
• ISO/FDIS 45001 (final draft international standard) to be published by March 2016;
• ISO 45001 to be published in October 2016.

The next meeting for the ISO/PC 283 committee will be held in March 2014 in Morocco in order to get the working draft of ISO 45001. It will then be open for comment, in order to ensure the standard reflects the needs of users around the world.

Some good news for our clients, section 69 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 has been in place for several months now, since October 1st 2013 in fact. A small but significant change introduced as part of the Act now makes it impossible for civil litigants to bring actions against their employer for a breach of duty under the regulations.

What does this mean to you?

In simple terms there we previously two routes to making a claim:

1. the injured party could assert that either the employer was negligent in their actions or arrangements, or;
2. they could argue that their employer hadn’t complied with health and safety regulation (often the easier route to a claim).

Now there is only the first option which is good news for employers.  This change will make it more difficult for claims to be successful as claimants can no longer simply rely on a technical breach of health and safety law. They will have to prove that the employer did not take “reasonable care” and prove that lack of care led to their injury, damage or loss.

Whilst it is going to take some time before we see any reduction in terms of litigation or insurance premiums this remains good news for all of our clients and another nail in the coffin of No Win No Fee actions and the compensation culture which this encourages.

The amendments are likely to reduce civil claims and will make employers feel less exposed to the risk of a claim. But don’t forget that claims are still both possible and are likely to continue to some time yet, particularly those which relates to incidents which occurred before the changes we made (01/10/2013).

Safety failings led Bristol City Council being fined after a park keeper suffered serious injuries when she was thrown from a tractor as it overturned.

The 51 year-old worker, broke her pelvis and badly damaged an Achilles tendon in the incident occurred in Netham Park, Bristol on 30 May 2012. Her injuries led to her remaining off work for a year but has since returned and is now employed as an office worker.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation led to a prosecution yesterday (15 Jan) of Bristol City Council at the city’s Magistrates’ Court.

The court was told that the park keeper, who was carrying out maintenance work, was driving the tractor with a trailer attached and had braked as the tractor descended a slope. The vehicle began to skid and the driver turned to avoid a fence but it overturned, throwing her from the seat.

The tractor was not fitted with a seat belt or any type of restraint and the Council had failed to ensure their employee had received adequate training on the use of the tractor the HSE discovered.

The nearly new tractor and trailer had been acquired by Bristol City Council shortly before the incident but not within the normal procurement procedures and no supplier training was provided as a result, the investigation also revealed.

Bristol City Council was fined a total of £20,000 and ordered to pay £4,700 in costs after admitting two breaches of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.
After the hearing, HSE inspector Kate Leftly, said:

“This incident was entirely preventable and has caused the worker considerable suffering and distress. She had trained three years for her park keeper role but is now office-bound and will need further surgery on the tendon requiring a 12-18 month recovery”.

“Every year, there are accidents involving transport in the workplace, some of which result in people being injured or even killed. People fall from vehicles, are knocked down, run over, or crushed against fixed parts, plant and trailers”.

“Bristol City Council had inadequate systems in place to ensure operators were suitably trained in the use of this equipment and failed to identify the need for a suitable seat restraint.”

Some huge changes have taken place in the past 40 years in terms of industry and the service sector.  Our economy has grown and changed from one based on manufacturing to one more aligned to high-tech and the service / financial sectors.  Through all of this the Health and Safety at Work Act has continued to apply to a very changed world.

What has helped in this is the way in which it is structured.  The Robens report changed legislation from being industry and item specific into a goal setting type of legislation which put the emphasis back at the door of the businesses managing risk.

You can see this as a blessing or a curse but the fact is that by doing this the Act enables us to implement safety in a way which works with our businesses.  Wait – I can feel a huge groan in the background!  Don’t be too hard on the Act itself or the HSE or others who enforce it.  What needs to change is not the Act itself but what has built up around it; no win no fee cases and ambulance chasers.  Without these influences we are free to implement common sense – so on the 40th anniversary of the Act lets all work together to do what everyone actually wants.  Reasonable measure to make sure everyone goes home safe today an every day.

Read on below for the HSE press release.

This year mark 40 years since Health and Safety at Work Act received Royal Assent. Arguably it is one of the best pieces of legislation on the statute books – although we know it is often misunderstood and misinterpreted. It has protected millions of British workers, and driven sharp reductions in incidents of occupational death, serious injury and ill health.

In 1974, fatalities to employees covered by the legislation in place then stood at 651. The latest figure for 2012/13 was down to 148 for employees and self-employed combined. The actual reduction is probably more than this as data for sectors not covered by health and safety law pre 1974 was not collected. In the same time frame (and with the same caveat) non-fatal injuries have dropped by more than 75 percent. There is still room for improvement clearly, but the change in the last 40 years is quite remarkable.

Before the 1974 Act there was a host of different regulations – some industries swamped with prescriptive rules and others with little or no regulation at all. Something needed to be done.

The 1972 Robens Report concluded there were too many regulations and that what was needed was a regulatory regime that set broad, non-prescriptive goals for dutyholders, underpinned by a fundamental principle: ‘those that create risk are best placed to manage it’.

The Act that emerged from his review swept away detailed and prescriptive industry regulations; it created a flexible system where regulations describe goals and principles, supported by codes of practice and guidance. Based on consultation and engagement, the new regime was designed to deliver a proportionate, targeted and risk-based approach.

Forty years on this approach still applies. Despite having diversified away from an economy based predominantly on heavy industry and manufacturing, much of the original vision and framework of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 remains relevant. The principles have been applied time and again to new and emerging technologies and sectors. The legacy is a safety record envied around the world.

Much of the current reform agenda is aimed at: stripping out unnecessary or duplicated regulation and helping smaller businesses to understand how to take a proportionate approach to managing their risks – but the basic principles remain the same.

Forty years on the Health and Safety at Work Act has demonstrated it can be applied to new responsibilities and new demands, creating the framework for people to come home safe and well from a day’s work in any sector of the economy.

Builders’ merchants Jewson Limited has been fined £14,000 for selling hard hats which failed to meet safety standards.

Jewson Limited appeared at Northampton Magistrates Court on Monday after an investigation by Northamptonshire County Council.

The hard hats failed a test against Personal Protective Equipment Regulations 2002 by trading standards officers in a proactive survey in January, 2012.

This included a Jewson Safety Helmet purchased from the Jewson premise in Pilot Road, Corby which did not comply with the shock absorption test in EN 397.

A further six helmets were purchased from Jewsons at St James Mill Road, Northampton and three of these also failed the same test.

Jewson Limited were informed of the results and advised that they had withdrawn the product from sale but another helmet was purchased from their Northampton branch when a sales assistant overrode the withdrawn from sale notification on the till.

This helmet was also tested and found to pass the shock absorption test.

The helmets stated “complies with : EN397” and had been imported from China by the company.

Jewson were only able to produce a test certificate from 2001 despite selling over 63,000 of them over an 11 year period.

Councillor Andre Gonzalez de Savage, county council cabinet member for strategic infrastructure, economic growth and public protection said: “I’m pleased that Trading Standards have investigated and prosecuted this case.

“It is impossible for users to detect this kind of issue for themselves and therefore it is vital that our officers proactively monitor the safety of products on sale.

“All manufacturers and importers need to carry out regular testing to ensure their products meet safety standards.

“We are always willing to work with our county businesses to ensure that they are fully compliant with applicable regulations and safety codes. We firmly believe in being proactive and supporting our communities”

Magistrates fined the Coventry-based business £2,500 on each of four offences and £4,000 for the latter offence. Costs of £7,500 were awarded to trading standards.

Anyone with concerns about the safety of products can inform Trading Standards by contacting the Citizens Advice consumer service on 08454 040506.

If you’ve got questions or need support on safety in the industrial, contracting or construction sectors please contact us for sensible and proportionate advice on 01453 800100