Health & Safety – where have we come from and where are we going to?
Once upon a time it was possible to discuss aspects of business and industry quite openly. Then we entered the age of ‘spin’ and now do try to discuss anything that might have any sort of negative side is apparently frowned upon and not just in the political side of the industry.
In an effort to bring together views for this article on where the Health & Safety sector fits within the water and sewerage and other utility industries some six industry leading organisations were asked to comment on various items of information uncovered in researching accident statistics provided in the public domain. They were then asked to provide comment on where these figures may have come from in terms of why they exist at all and what could be done about changing the trends they were showing. Just to say, not one felt the urge to provide any comment in response. Why? Possibly because, as will be seen in the following, the comments would be required to be made about what may be seen as somewhat less than positive figures. So what was so controversial?
THE GOOD NEWS
Perhaps we should start with the good news. Over the past 20 years or so there has been a major push across various industries to generate a broader understanding of health & safety in the workplace. This as far as the construction industry is concerned has been very successful with figures showing that deaths and serious injuries have fallen by around 75 to 80% from the heights they had reached at the time this safety push started.
From the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) website it appears that our own industry sector tends to be amalgamated into the general construction industry figures, one assumes for ease of presentation. Where
figures are separated out in any form the numbers relating to the water and other utilities sectors would appear to be so small that they are not represented on some of the graphics because according to the publications viewed ‘the sample cases are too small to provide reliable estimates’. These tend to be where rates of death or injury per 100,000 workers are highlighted.
This appears to say that as compared to other construction industry sectors, accident rates in our industry are relatively small, which has to be a very good sign. This is not to say that the health & safety job is done, not by a long way.
However, assuming that rates across the construction industry are reflected in similar fashion in the water and other utilities sectors the drop in accidents must have been very significant over the past two decade
The driver, it must be said, has to have been the industry-wide push towards broader and better qualifications for the workforce in general, from certification for various manual equipment types to the more specialist situations such as confined space entry operations.
Having covered much about the various courses available, the course providers and what the courses have to offer to both the industry and the individuals taking them, there is perhaps no need to cover this again here. Any information about courses and providers is fully and openly available on the internet or through trade bodies and associations across the country.
THE NOT SO GOOD SIDE
One of the more difficult aspects of the research for this article was trying to find an easily accessible source of information about accident statistics for the sectors of relevance to Drain Trader.
Whilst more recent statistics were reasonably accessible through the RIDDOR (The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations) website, historical data did appear to be directly available. So it is difficult to know how historical trends can be easily viewed. So if anyone was looking to plan to see where and how there may need to be changes within the H&S set-up for the industry to address more poorly performing sectors it must be difficult when there is little to say where these areas are specifically.
It is surely only with easy access to these sorts of figures that the industry can effectively arrange the right, and possibly additional, training provision covering the most accident prone sectors over and above the regulatory requirements that are
4 drain TRADER | December 2016 |
www.draintraderltd.com
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