Industry News
British Safety Council Calls On Government And The HSE To Strengthen And Enforce COVID Secure Workplace Rules To Protect Workers
The latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that COVID deaths are higher among low-paid and manual workers in England and Wales, underlining the need for stronger COVID Secure workplace rules to protect workers and for enforcement when rules are broken in the workplace.
Sadly, almost 8,000 workers have died where it is believed that the cause was directly due to COVID. Workers whose jobs involve regular exposure to COVID-19 or working near others, continue to have higher COVID-19 death rates. However, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the UK regulator responsible for workplace safety, has not brought a single prosecution against an employer for breaking COVID-19 rules, even though people clearly mix in workplaces, which increases the potential to catch and transmit the virus.
While HSE Inspectors always act in proportion to risk, the regulator considers COVID-19 to be a ‘significant’ rather than a ‘serious’ risk. This limits the toughness of its sanctions. There is, however, some merit in HSE’s pragmatic approach, as most employers want to keep their staff
safe, and work with the regulator to help resolve complex issues quickly.
The nub of the issue is the definition of risk. A ‘significant’ risk is one that causes non-permanent or reversible health effects, whereas a ‘serious’ risk is one that causes a permanent, progressive or irreversible condition. Given we are amid an unprecedented
global pandemic that has resulted in thousands of workplace deaths, the infection of multiple employees through work-related activities with a potentially fatal disease seems instinctively to be a ‘serious’ health risk.
The desire from the Government to keep workplaces operational, together with a decade of resource budget cuts, has been a factor in the HSE’s categorisation of the COVID outbreaks within the workplace, which has prevented inspectors from issuing prohibition notices as part of the remedial actions that could be taken when investigating these outbreaks.
Hence, the British Safety Council calls on the HSE to treat COVID as a ‘serious’ risk to help prevent further workplace COVID deaths. We appreciate this will impact HSE’s capacity to inspect workplaces, recognising the regulator has had a significant cut in its funding and workforce in recent years. We therefore, in tandem, urge the Government to provide the funding necessary for the HSE to better protect workers during these unparalleled times.
The British Safety Council also echoes the call made by the Pensions and Investments Research Consultancy (PIRC) for employers to report all cases of COVID employee illness, even when they believe that the infection was the result of community transmission. Without better data neither the HSE nor the public can understand the scale of the risk. As infection reduces, everyone needs to focus on the ‘hotspots’.
BESCA Strengthens Vent Hygiene Scheme
BESCA has responded to growing demand for improved fire safety in buildings by adding new features to its Ventilation Hygiene Elite (VHE) scheme website.
The scheme is based on BESA’s long-established guide to good practice and the most recently released Specification, TR19® Grease, which sets the industry approved standard for ventilation hygiene – an essential way to reduce the risk of fire being spread through kitchen extraction systems.
The Association’s certification arm BESCA audits work to ensure standards are maintained and manages a database of post-clean verification reports to give reassurance to clients and their insurers that ventilation systems are being maintained to a high standard. It also ensures that all operatives used by member companies are undertaking recognised training and have reached the right level of competence to meet the TR19® standard.
The scheme has now been further enhanced with the introduction of a ‘live’ feature on the VHE website to show whether firms are registered on the scheme and fully compliant with TR19® or whether their status is under review for any reason. This is designed to ensure the system of ensuring compliance is robust and can give clients the reassurance they need when looking to employ a company with fully up-to-date professional credentials.
They will be able to see if a member company is a fully approved member, under review or suspended from the scheme. Some firms may be going through an audit process before becoming approved members or be the subject of an ‘elevated compliance surveillance’ before BESCA confirms their compliance.
For more information visit:
www.besca.org.uk 04 fmuk
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