Health and Safety with Martyn Weeks from Fire Risk Safety
New Partnership with Fire Risk Safety
It’s a depressing thought with which to start the new year, but most of us are very often only one step away from a disaster. A simple slip, a patch of ice, a blind-spot...it doesn’t take much, and of course, the consequences can continue to affect us forever. Our problem is that we resolutely believe that trouble only happens to other people. Other people fall off ladders or miss their footing or touch the wrong wires or, come to that, catch diseases, get caught by a freak wave or blasted by a terrorist bomb, not us. And it’s not true because it is us...
What’s also true is that falls from a height account for more reported accidents than any other cause of injury. The Health and Safety Executive’s report on “Slips and trips and falls from height in Great Britain 2017”, available at http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causinj/kinds-of-accident.pdf
Makes salutary reading. In brief, these accounted for 31% of fatalities, were responsible for more than half of all major (56%) and almost a third of over seven days (31%) injuries to employees, making up 37% of all reported injuries to employees (RIDDOR). Extrapolated into human misery this means that in the UK 25 lives ended during the period because of a fall at work and 2,727 people had to spend over a week off work because of what the HSE defines a “major fall”. That’s a lot of people.
Our own estimate is that 100% of these accidents didn’t have to happen, that they were avoidable, that both employer and employee took the view that it wouldn’t happen to them, that they were somehow immune from disaster...and the point is that no-one is immune. Our very sincere call to anyone reading this is to not allow risks to be taken, to plan ahead, to look at worst case scenarios and, for heaven’s sake, consult the experts at Fire Risk Safety.
New Partnership with Fire Risk Safety
It’s a depressing thought with which to start the new year, but most of us are very often only one step away from a disaster. A simple slip, a patch of ice, a blind-spot...it doesn’t take much, and of course, the consequences can continue to affect us forever. Our problem is that we resolutely believe that trouble only happens to other people. Other people fall off ladders or miss their footing or touch the wrong wires or, come to that, catch diseases, get caught by a freak wave or blasted by a terrorist bomb, not us. And it’s not true because it is us...
What’s also true is that falls from a height account for more reported accidents than any other cause of injury. The Health and Safety Executive’s report on “Slips and trips and falls from height in Great Britain 2017”, available at http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causinj/kinds-of-accident.pdf
Makes salutary reading. In brief, these accounted for 31% of fatalities, were responsible for more than half of all major (56%) and almost a third of over seven days (31%) injuries to employees, making up 37% of all reported injuries to employees (RIDDOR). Extrapolated into human misery this means that in the UK 25 lives ended during the period because of a fall at work and 2,727 people had to spend over a week off work because of what the HSE defines a “major fall”. That’s a lot of people.
Our own estimate is that 100% of these accidents didn’t have to happen, that they were avoidable, that both employer and employee took the view that it wouldn’t happen to them, that they were somehow immune from disaster...and the point is that no-one is immune. Our very sincere call to anyone reading this is to not allow risks to be taken, to plan ahead, to look at worst case scenarios and, for heaven’s sake, consult the experts at Fire Risk Safety.