Safety Matters - OCTOBER 2006

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In this issue:

New fire regulations came into force on October 1

New fire regulations explained

The decision by the HSE to shift its principal focus from inspection and enforcement to the provision of guidance for employers is putting the health and Further and Higher Education workers at risk

The dangers of operating work equipment without adequate training have been underlined by the HSE

HSE issues warning to maintenance workers – don’t take the gamble with asbestos

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has urged employers to introduce workplace smoking bans ahead of next summer's smoking regulations

Fines imposed after worker's legs crushed by reversing vehicle

Fatal industrial accident results in company being fined £25,000

Engineering firm prosecuted following a site accident which resulted in an employee losing his lower leg

Company fined £100,000 after employees suffered from painful allergic dermatitis over four year period

BUPA Care Homes fined £90,000 after the tragic death of a 95-year old woman in their care

Airline caterer fined after employee falls 5 metres

Are your company's safety systems up to scratch or are you risking prosecution? At MESH we have extensive experience of helping companies to improve their health and safety and in many cases improve their competitiveness.

New fire regulations came into force on October 1

The regulations require all organisations and non-domestic premises in England and Wales to carry out fire risk assessments and ensure the safety of all who may be at risk from fire.

The regulations require that firms must also provide information and training in fire precautions and emergency arrangements under the new Fire Safety Reform Order, or face potential prosecution.

Responsibility for complying with the Fire Safety Order will rest with a company's 'responsible person', who is usually the employer or site manager. Organisations that employ five or more people must now record the significant findings of this assessment.

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New fire safety regulations and how it affects your business

The cost of a fire can be high and many businesses do not survive. In 2004 the costs attributed to fire - including property damage, human casualties and lost business, were estimated at £2.5 billion.

The RRFSO is a fire risk assessment based approach where the responsible person(s) for the premises must decide how to address the risks identified, while meeting certain requirements. You must, whatever the size of the risk, conduct a fire risk assessment of your area of responsibility.

By undertaking a fire risk assessment, the responsible person(s) will need to look at how to prevent fire from occurring in the first place, by removing or reducing hazards and risks (ignition sources) and then at the precautions to ensure that people are adequately protected if a fire were still to occur. Therefore the main emphasis of the changes will be to move towards fire prevention.

The fire risk assessment must also take into consideration the effect a fire may have on anyone in or around your premises plus neighbouring property. The building fire risk assessment will also need to be kept under regular review.

The RRFSO will apply to virtually all non-domestic properties, including voluntary organisations and will be subject to monitoring and where appropriate, enforcement by the Local Authority Fire Service (LAFS).

All existing fire legislation is repealed or revoked including the Fire Precautions Act 1971 and the Fire Precautions (Workplace) Regulations:

• Fire Certificates are abolished and no longer issued
• Any Fire Risk Assessments that you have carried out will require reviewing and updating.

The regulations require consideration now to be given to include property safety, fire fighter safety and the environment around the site. The responsible person would have a duty to protect all risks.

Unlike the amended 1997 Fire Precautions (Workplace) Regulations, the RRFSO places emphasis on business continuity and containing and preventing the spread of small fires.

Protection is explicitly extended to all occupants, which would include employees, visitors, contractors and passers-by who would all have to be considered in the fire risk assessment.

The identified responsible person(s) would take full corporate liability.

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The decision by the HSE to shift its principal focus from inspection and enforcement to the provision of guidance for employers is putting the Health & Further and Higher Education workers at risk

In a damning response to the Government's consultation on its health and safety strategy, the University and College Union (UCU) said that many HE and FE employers did only the "bare minimum" to meet their health and safety responsibilities, failed to consult union and safety representatives on the issue and had not done enough to come to terms with new health risks such as work-related stress.

UCU employment rights head Roger Kline called for "a complete rethink of the HSE's direction".
"Education lacks the physical hazards of some sectors, but there are major health and safety concerns," Mr Kline said. "Stress levels in education are twice the national average for all sectors. Repetitive Strain Injury is also a serious issue for many".

He added that the union are concerned that the HSE don't enforce occupational health issues as they should. "The focus is on  ensuring that a guard on a machine is replaced if someone's fingers are cut off, but they have to be pushed on health issues like stress. They have failed to adapt to the modern workplace - and so have many FE and HE employers".

The dangers of operating work equipment without adequate training have been underlined by the HSE

The warning follows a case in which a 17 year old employee sustained fractures to his arm, wrist and hand after becoming trapped in a forklift truck he was operating without having undergone any formal training.

His employers, DJP Poultry Handling Services, were fined £2,000 with costs of £1,555 after admitting breaching regulation 9 of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.

The HSE investigating inspector commented: "The forklift truck was being operated by an untrained, unsupervised, 17 year old driver. He had been employed by the company as a poultry handler and it was part of his job to drive forklift trucks although he had not attended any formal, approved training course. If he had, this incident could have been avoided."

Companies need to ensure that those managing and working with forklift trucks need to be competent; this means having the appropriate level of training and experience. They must ensure that safety measures are implemented, and once implemented, that they are maintained appropriately.


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HSE issues warning to maintenance workers – don’t take the gamble with asbestos

“Don’t take a gamble with your life” is the message to maintenance workers from Steve Coldrick, Director of the Health and Safety Executive’s Disease Reduction Programme.

Workers, including plumbers, carpenters and builders, account for more than one quarter of the 3,500 asbestos-related cancer deaths each year. To raise their awareness of the dangers of working with asbestos, the HSE has launched its “Don’t take the gamble” campaign.

More than half a million non-domestic premises and houses still contain some form of the material, posing a real threat to unwary maintenance workers. These workers are at risk because they may unknowingly drill or cut into material that could contain asbestos and breathe in the deadly fibres.

At the launch of the campaign at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health’s annual conference, Steve Coldrick said:

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The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has urged employers to introduce workplace smoking bans ahead of next summer's smoking regulations.

From Summer 2007, all workplaces, with a few minor exceptions, must be smoke free or employers will face prosecution.

In a new guide published to coincide with the closing date for submissions on the draft smoking regulations, the TUC urges businesses to avoid delaying the inevitable and start discussing with employees the most sensible means to implement the ban.

The guide says that every workplace should have a smoking policy - drawn up in consultation with staff - that protects smokers from persecution and offers them help giving up. It also needs to cover what happens to persistent smokers who breach the ban as well as breaks for staff who will soon have to go outside to light up.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "With around 700 workers dying every year from smoking-related diseases caused by passive smoking at work, there is no sensible reason why employers can't be sitting down with staff now to talk about how the ban will happen and how to make every workplace a safer, healthier place to be."


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Fines imposed after worker's legs crushed by reversing vehicle

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has warned site owners and managers of the risks of injury arising from reversing vehicles after bringing a prosecution against two companies responsible for a site accident where a worker's legs were crushed by a reversing lorry.

The accident occurred when a driver from Tripod's haulage subcontractor reversed a lorry but failed to see a Bardon contracting employee who was marking the road surface with his back to the vehicle. The lorry ran over the employee's legs resulting in severe crush injuries.

HSE inspector Alec Ferguson said: "Most of the men on site had worked together before. However, despite both Bardon and Tripod having recognised the risk of injury from reversing vehicles, and taking account of this in their method statements, the visiting lorry driver received no site induction about safe reversing from either company on site."

On September 8 2006, at the Central Criminal Court in London, Applegate Industries UK Ltd (Bardon Contracting Division) and Tripod Crest Planing Ltd both pleaded guilty to breaches of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and were each fined £25,000.

Negative publicity such as this can have a deeper impact on a business because the search engines, such as Google, pick up on this type of story. If, for example, you type 'Tripod Crest Planing' into Google you will see in the results that the negative publicity is given a higher priority than the website of that company. For any prospective customer of theirs looking for that company website, that negative publicity will send out bad signals about how that company operates. Therefore, it's essential for all companies to appreciate that negative publicity is highly visible and can have further knock-on effects in terms of lost business because of what can easily be seen on the Internet.


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Fatal industrial accident results in company being fined £25,000

The employee was trapped in vacuum forming equipment which activated after he had entered it. He subsequently died from his injuries in hospital.

The prosecution followed a HSE investigation which found that the company failed to carry out adequate risk assessments, ensure a safe workplace or effective supervision, provide training on control measures for employees and managers, and monitor health and safety systems.

The company pleaded guilty to the charge at Trafford Magistrates' Court and was fined £20,000 with £5,100 in costs.

The HSE had found that the company had identified this operation as a potentially hazardous procedure and a safe system of work was drawn up prior to the accident. This safe system of work was attached to the front of the machine. The procedure however had not been implemented; if it had been then it would have gone some way to reduce the risk of injury.

However, it was still not sufficient to comply with HSE guidelines. The lack of risk perception through the organisation was a symptom of the lack of training delivered to both employees and managers who were working in this area.


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Engineering firm prosecuted following a site accident which resulted in an employee losing his lower leg

On September 14, 2005, while assisting in an operation to lift and turn a fabrication using a forklift truck, the fabrication fell onto the employee's right leg, causing serious injury. A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation reported the company's failure to carry out proper risk assessments or to implement adequate safety procedures during lifting operations. They found that by taking a little more time to plan safely, this accident was entirely foreseeable and preventable.

The HSE commented that accidents involving objects falling from lifting equipment are sadly all too common and, as in this case, the results are often disastrous for the individuals involved. Employers have a duty to do all they can to prevent such accidents by assessing the risks beforehand, making sure the work is planned and safety measures are adequate. Anybody using lifting equipment should be properly trained and all equipment should be checked and well-maintained by a competent engineer. Anyone working with fork-lifts or lifting equipment in general should never underestimate the risks.

The company was fined £4,000 plus costs of £1,261 when it pleaded guilty to breaches of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations (LOLER).


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Company fined £100,000 after employees suffered from painful allergic dermatitis over four year period

Photo-Me International plc was fined a total of £100,000 and ordered to pay £30,000 costs at Bristol Crown Court on Thursday 28 September for health and safety offences. The company had pleaded guilty to the charges.

Photo-Me was fined £30,000 for breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, and £10,000 for 6 separate breaches of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Regulations for not making adequate risk assessments, not preventing or controlling exposure of employees to chemicals, and for not providing any ‘health surveillance’ of employees at-risk. They were also fined £10,000 for not reporting a case of the disease to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), and were ordered to pay £30,000 costs.

Speaking after the case, HSE investigating inspector Liam Osborne said: “This is an important case. Allergic dermatitis is a painful skin disease that employers need to manage as effectively as the general safety of their workers. Photo-Me knew of the risks to health that these chemicals posed, yet failed to assess those risks properly and provide proper systems of work and control measures, including correct personal protective equipment, to reduce the risk of harm. The size of the penalty demonstrates the Court’s approach to this type of failure in the workplace.”

The case followed an HSE investigation that revealed significant failings in the company’s management and control of exposure to chemicals. Its workers at its premises in Bristol were exposed to hazardous chemicals over a four-year period leading to the onset of a disease called ‘allergic contact dermatitis’.

Do your staff work with chemicals and do you have COSHH assessments and systems of control in place? If you require help then why not contact MESH, we have extensive experience of undertaking COSHH assessments.


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BUPA Care Homes fined £90,000 after the tragic death of a 95-year old woman in their care

BUPA Care Homes Ltd has been fined £90,000 and ordered to pay £19,247 costs to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in a prosecution by the HSE, following the death of 95-year-old woman, Mrs Charlotte Wood from Mottingham.

Mrs Wood became a resident at the Abbotsleigh Mews Residential and Nursing Home in Sidcup run by BUPA Care Homes Ltd in 2001. She was unable to walk or move independently. On 28 November 2003, Mrs Wood slipped from a Sarita hoist, which was being used to get her out of a bath, and fractured her shoulder. While waiting for surgery on her shoulder, Mrs Wood contracted pneumonia and subsequently died on 2 December 2003.

The care assistant who was attending Mrs Wood had been employed by BUPA for about six weeks but had not received training and had not used this type of hoist before. Risk assessments and procedures for manual handling and safe bathing were not brought to the attention of care assistants and the supervision of staff carrying out lifting operations was inadequate.

Airline caterer fined after employee falls 5 metres

The company was fined £12,000 and ordered to pay HSE costs of £2,181 for failing to ensure the safety of its employees. LSG Sky Chefs UK pleaded guilty after a driver loader fell five metres between his vehicle and a Boeing 767 aircraft.

The driver had been pushing a catering cart across a moveable platform between his catering vehicle and a Britannia Airways jet at Gatwick. Due to a lack of proper instruction, part of the platform became unbalanced and the employee and cart fell five metres. The employee suffered a broken right leg and broken femur in his left leg, along with cuts and bruising.