July 2013 Health and Safety Legal Update:
Provisional figures recently announced by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) for 2012-2013 have confirmed that UK worker fatalities have fallen to a low of 148 last year compared to 172 the previous year. This is also lower than the average of the last 5 years, which is 181.
The overall trend in the reduction of fatal workplace incidents though has somewhat plateaued recently, see the graph below, issued by the HSE.
These figures relate to a figure of 0.5 deaths per 100,000 workers compared to 0.6 from last year.
The number of members of the public killed in work related accidents (excluding railways) was quoted as 113 for the same period.
Agriculture and Construction are still the two of the higher risk professions to work in, their fatal accident rates per 100,000 workers ran at 8.8 (nearly 20 times the national average) and 1.9 (nearly 4 times the national average) respectively.
The recycling industry also performed very badly at 8.2 deaths per 100,000 workers, which is around 16 times higher than the national average.
Self employed workers were often significantly more likely to be killed in the workplace than employees across all sectors, apart from construction.
Britain's performance puts us in third place in Europe behind Slovakia and Netherlands.
With these figures as they are, we need to ask ourselves the question, how many work related deaths are acceptable in a civilised society? Are we happy to maintain our current level and be third place in Europe? In my mind, when it is your brother, sister, friend, son, daughter, mother or father who is killed, the answer is no workplace deaths are acceptable and we should aim to be the best in Europe, if not the world. Also we must remember that these figures do not include the ~4,000 Asbestos related deaths that occur in the UK each year, these are so vast they are quoted separately from other work related deaths and are currently on an upward trend.
Herbert Heinrich was an American safety pioneer, he studied thousands of workplace accidents. He suggested in his analysis, that only a very small percentage (around 2%) of accidents were unforeseeable and hence unpreventable. This means based on last years figures of 148 deaths, only around 3 of these were not preventable and were "accidents" in the true sense of the word.
Falling from a roof 10 metres high, without any proper fall restraint, for example, which still happens many times every year, is preventable. A crane or lifting equipment failure during a lift, again is preventable with the correct maintenance and inspection, but this too sadly is an all too frequent occurrence causing many fatalities. There are numerous ways that these types of incidents can be prevented, it is just that some contractors, employees, supervisors, managers and company directors still don't take these activities seriously enough because they think that, "It will never happen to them!" The 148 people who died last year in the workplace probably thought that too!
Most health and safety laws, approved codes of practice, health and safety guidance and regulations are developed after many thousands of people (or more) have been harmed by specific workplace hazards such as: Asbestos, Display Screen Equipment, Manual Handling, Noise, Working at Height, Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment and Vibrating Equipment.
None of the rules associated with these hazards would have been developed if the issues were "old wives tales" or if they had only affected just a few people very occasionally.
It is not "elf and safety gone mad" to suitably: inform, instruct, train and supervise workers, carry out suitable and sufficient risk assessments of all the activities with significant risk, provide adequate PPE and maintain equipment, buildings or plant to minimum legal standards. The rules formulated by health and safety experts have evolved over many years due to hard scientific facts and proof that these issues are real and the harm caused is preventable!