Author: Woods Whur

‘New Year, new me’ is often a phrase used at we turn our attention to the New Year and reflect on the one that has just passed us.

This applies just as much to businesses as it does to your personal attitude. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) suggest that risk assessments should be reviewed on an ‘ongoing basis’. Often an annual check is sensible for many businesses.

The purpose of reviewing risk assessments is essential to determine whether there have been any changes to the business activities which may, in turn, affect the risks associated with particular tasks/premises/individuals. It is essential that your risk assessments reflect the current conditions and they have not just been left to gather dust!

In particular, the HSE suggests you should look at your risk assessment and ask:

• Have there been any significant changes?
• Are there improvements you still need to make?
• Have your workers spotted a problem?
• Have you learnt anything from accidents, near misses, work-related ill-health (physical and mental) reports, sickness absence data or employee surveys?

It’s a worthwhile task to set you up on the annual January task-list of broader business compliance from a health and safety perspective. If you don’t review it now when are you going to find time to do it?

If you have any regulatory questions please do contact Sarah or James on sfrow@www.woodswhur.co.uk and james@www.woodswhur.co.uk or telephone the office on 01132343055.

The latest workplace figures for health and safety statistics have been published by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and provides some interesting reading.

Broadly, there were 1.4 million work-related ill health cases in 2018/19 and the annual costs of work-related injury and new cases of work-related ill health in 2017/18 (excluding long latency illnesses) was a cost of £15 billion.

In addition to the cost, the overall working days lost due to work-related ill health and non-fatal workplace injuries in 2018/19 was a total of £28.2 million. This, in itself, would prove to be costly to any business and not only financially, as inevitably employees being unexpectedly absent naturally has a knock on effect to other employees, productivity etc. The rate of self-reported work related ill health has shown a general downward trend but has been flat in recent years

Sadly, there were 2,526 deaths as a result of mesothelioma, with a similar number of lung cancer deaths linked to past exposures to asbestos. In addition, there were 12,000 lung disease deaths each year estimated to be linked to past exposures at work. These particular statistics released show that control of asbestos is as important as ever to prevent exposure. Experience has shown employers still neglect control measures in this area.

Work related stress, depression or anxiety also features in the summary statistics and identifies that public administration/defence is the sector with the highest rate of stress, followed by human health and social work, and education. These illnesses such as stress and depression has shown signs of increasing in recent years. Estimates of the main cause of work-related stress and depression suggest a mixture of workload, lack of support, violence, threats or bullying and changes to work. Again with non-tangible issues such as stress the solution is clearly seen as one that had a health and safety element to it – not a HR and medical one, which I think employers have been guilty of in the past confining it to.

The most common accident kinds are, unsurprisingly, slips, trips or falls on the same level followed by handling, lifting or carrying. The rate of self-reported non-fatal injury does show a downward trend. There were 69,208 non-fatal injuries reported under RIDDOR in 2018/19. RIDDOR reportable accidents mean that a notification is made to the HSE or the relevant council. That then means an inspection and possibly Fee For Intervention (FFI) costs or an improvement notice, or even a prosecution. If there is no accident then it is likely that there will be no (or reduced likelihood of a) visit by the HSE and further contingency resources being put into responding to something that could have been avoidable.

The statistics are certainly food for thought and provide a helpful summary for those in the safety industry to consider. A summary of the statistics can be found at http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overall/hssh1819.pdf and provide a useful one stop shop for these recent statistics.

The highly anticipated report following the conclusion of phase 1 (of 2) of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has been published this week which you should have not failed to see in the news despite Brexit!

For those of you in construction industry & it’s supply chain, landlords, property management, involved in the design and refurbishment of premises or in any way connected with buildings for residential use or vulnerable occupants, the worst is yet to come. Phase 1 dealt with the evening of the fire itself and, although not the intention of the inquiry, has also made a comment in respect of the ACM cladding used on the outside of the high rise residential tower. This shows the importance of this aspect of the issues and highlights that recommendations will heavily focus on this following conclusion of phase 2.

Phase 2 of the public inquiry will commence in January 2020, and the recent phase 1 report has confirmed that a number of key issues have come to light that will be considered in the phase 2 stage of the public inquiry that have not been considered in detail to date:

• The decisions relating to the design of the refurbishment and the choice of materials.
• The regime for testing and certifying the reaction to fire of materials intended for use in construction.
• The design and choice of materials.
• The performance of fire doors in the tower, in particular, whether they complied with relevant regulations, their maintenance and the reasons why some of the self-closing devices do not appear to have worked.
• The organisation and management of the LFB, in particular in relation to the formulation of policy in the light of experience, the arrangements for training firefighters and control room staff, and the arrangements for sharing information about the particular problems associated with fighting fires in high-rise buildings.
• The warnings of potential fire hazards given by the local community.
• The authorities’ response to the disaster.

Contrary to some of the media reports that have been published to date, the sole blame for the Grenfell Tower fire has not been placed on the London Fire Brigade and the public inquiry has not yet concluded.

The phase 1 report does criticise the London Fire Brigade but there are any more elements to the Grenfell Tower tragedy which will be addressed as the public inquiry continues.

We will be keeping a watching brief on the developments of the inquiry and will provide regular updates as it progresses.