A selection of this week's silliest health and safety stories

August is here and, with Parliament on recess until the 5th of September, silly season is in full swing here in Britain. This is that time of year when news outlets, starved of real stories, publish all sorts of daft articles in the hope of keeping readers interested until the end of the summer holidays.

As we've seen in previous years, cringeworthy health and safety stories tend to become a lot more commonplace during silly season - it seems that nothing gets readers fired up like an opportunity to complain about "health and safety gone mad". To give you a taste of the absurdity that besmirches health and safety's good name every August, here are 3 of the silliest H&S stories from the past 7 days:

• Flower Baskets Taken Down: Lincolnshire newspaper the Spalding Guardian reported yesterday that the Holbeach in Bloom committee were up in arms after being told to take down several hanging flower baskets. The baskets had been hanging from brackets on Western Power electricity poles.  "I just think it's health and safety gone mad," said Graham Rudkin, chairman of Holbeach in Bloom. "We check the brackets every year and the baskets are not a danger to anybody." A spokesman for Western Power stated that the baskets had been ordered removed because the company could not allow anything to interfere with or be connected to its electrical infrastructure in any way. [source]
  
  
• Shop Sign Sparks Debate: Last Friday, Gloucestershire Live shared the story of a Winchcombe toy store who had placed an advertising board in the street outside the shop in the hope of attracting extra customers. Toys to Grow sought permission from Highways England before setting out the sign, but this didn't stop another local business from registering a formal complaint on the grounds that the board represented a potential trip hazard. Gloucestshire Today published this story under the headline 'Health and safety gone mad? 'Trip hazard' shop sign sees Winchcombe divided'. Local residents have reportedly rallied around the toy shop, with many donating money to help the business obtain planning permission for a wall sign instead. [source]
  
  
• Trampoline Tiff: Residents of West View Lane in Sheffield were disappointed last weekend when a housing provider threatened to take away a children's trampoline that several local families had chipped in to purchase. "We understand some residents will be disappointed we can't allow a trampoline in a communal garden," said a spokesperson for The Guinness Partnership, "but their health and wellbeing is our main priority." One resident, Allison Allette, stated: "We, as parents, feel the trampoline is safe and that should be all that matters." She also described the whole situation as - you guessed it - "health and safety gone mad". [source]

As we've suggested before, the trouble with stories like these is that they reinforce the public perception of health and safety as something that's simply out to spoil their enjoyment. As most of us know, this simply isn't the case - health and safety is there to save lives, and the sooner people stop attacking it and using it as an excuse for other things, the sooner everyone will come to view it in a more positive light.

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Health and safety helps countless people all over the world every day. It helps people to stay safe at work, in public places, and even in their own homes, and it ensures that those who put the safety of others at risk don't get away with it. Health and safety is an important and useful industry with a vital role to play in the modern world.

Sadly, as we've seen time and again, many people seem to think that health and safety's primary purpose is to serve as an all-purpose excuse for any occasion. The latest manifestation of this attitude came just yesterday, when a hotel in Llangollen, Denbighshire closed down without notice and pinned the blame on - you guessed it - "health and safety concerns" (source). The Wild Pheasant's management have cancelled all bookings, including wedding receptions, and placed the business into the hands of administrators, but no explanation appears to have been given beyond the one token mention of H&S.

This sort of thing is incredibly damaging to the health and safety industry, and especially to public opinion thereof. Many UK citizens are already far too sceptical of health and safety measures (or 'red tape'), and stories like this don't help at all. The closure of the Wild Pheasant will no doubt cause a good deal of disruption to numerous people's plans, and those individuals will now have to seek refunds and entirely reorganise their holidays or even their weddings. It's not hard to see how the people in that position might end up resenting the "health and safety concerns" that we're told led to this closure.

So, business owners of Britain, it's time to make a pledge: please do not blame health and safety for problems that have nothing to do with measures that, at the end of the day, are only there to protect people. And if you do genuinely feel that H&S is somehow the root of your troubles, at least give a more specific explanation than 'we're closing due to health and safety concerns'!

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Photo by Josie Campbell (geograph.org.uk)

A few days ago, it emerged that Tata Steel had been fined over £2m, after two serious incidents occurred at its Northamptonshire site. Both of these involved workers sustaining severe hand injuries, as a result of avoidable contact with dangerous machinery.

The first of these incidents involved a 26 year old worker, who lost the middle and ring fingers on his left hand, after trying to clear a blockage on a manufacturing line with unsuitable guarding. The second incident occurred in 2015,  when a 52 year old lost part of his little finger after it became caught in a lathe, again, due to unsuitable guarding on the machinery.

Although a spokesman for Tata was quoted as stating that health and safety is the company's most important priority, serious questions must be raised after two near identical incidents took place within months of one another, on the same premises no less! It is clear from the evidence found upon inspection by the HSE, that there was an obvious neglect of duty in terms of properly identifying the serious risks posed to Tata workers, as well as a failure to resolve this issue after the first incident occurred. 

It shouldn't take a serious injury or fatality to make a company take their health and safety procedures seriously, and one would hope that it wouldn't take multiple incidents for a company to implement serious changes. Perhaps the only consolation going forward, is that other companies will be struck by the severity of the issue, and therefore implement better prevention strategies in their own workplaces. 

For anyone concerned with avoiding the mistakes made by Tata, remember to follow a simple but impactful health and safety strategy:

• Educate - Ensure that staff are thoroughly trained before operating dangerous machinery, or performing hazardous tasks without supervision.
• Inform -  Make staff aware of the risks involved in their operations, displaying safety signs and warnings to keep the message fresh in people's minds.
• Protect - Ensure that the correct safety features are in place to minimise potential risks, and provide the required personal protective equipment.
• Asses - Regularly evaluate the level of safety in your workplace, and identify any potential risks that require preventative action.

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The dangers of asbestos are a subject we've covered time and again here on the Label Source blog, but we're continuing to see story after story about people who don't take those dangers seriously enough, and about the consequences that this attitude can lead to.

The latest such story was publish only today by the Worcester News.

Story and photograph from www.worcesternews.co.uk

Back in October 2013, Christopher Whitehead Language College in Worcester hired two 18-year-old workers to remove an asbestos roof from a small lean-to building on the school grounds. The pair accomplished this by knocking the asbestos down from atop the building before double-bagging the material and disposing of it.

If you've ever heard the line about how 'asbestos is perfectly safe as long as it isn't disturbed'*, you'll spot the problem with this method right away. By knocking the asbestos roof down, the two workers at Christopher Whitehead School no doubt released a great number of asbestos fibres into the air and risked inhaling them. While asbestos exposure causes no instantaneous harm, more than 4 thousand people die every year in the UK from slow-acting asbestos-related conditions such as mesothelioma. And while the work was carried out during the October half-term holiday, this doesn't necessarily mean that the two workmen were the only people at risk here, as this story from the British Lung Foundation illustrates. 

So here we are, saying it again: asbestos fibres are deadly and every measure should be taken in order to keep them from being released into the air and potentially breathed in. Knocking apart an asbestos roof is very dangerous; indeed, this was recognised in a complaint about the work at Christopher Whitehead School by public service union Unison. This complaint was upheld by the Health and Safety Executive, who reprimanded the school for poor health and safety practices.

Click here for more information on how to deal with asbestos safely, or visit our Asbestos Signs & Labels department to browse our full range of asbestos safety products.

*From the HSE's web page on asbestos: "As long as asbestos is in good condition and is not disturbed there is negligible risk. However, if it is disturbed or damaged, it can become a danger to health, because asbestos fibres are released into the air and people may breathe them in."

There was worrying news from the HSE (Health & Safety Executive) this week: workplace fatalities are becoming more common in the United Kingdom, with 2015/16 seeing a slight increase in deaths compared to 2014/15.

According to provisional figures, there have been 144 workplace fatalities in the UK over the past 12 months - that's 2 more than the 2014/15 total of 142 (source). Not a huge difference, you may think, but it's shocking to learn that the annual number of fatal accidents has gone up at all; with safety practices now better (and regulations stricter) than ever, we really ought to be seeing a sizeable decrease in workplace deaths from one year to the next. 

Chris Green, a partner at a law firm based in Liverpool, responded to the HSE's latest figures with the following statement (originally published on www.liverpoolecho.co.uk):

"One death in the workplace is too many and employers must do more to ensure the safety of their staff when on the job. Initiatives such as visible boardroom involvement and leadership of safety culture programmes have been shown to reduce accidents at a time when the costs of not doing enough to ensure safety are higher than ever before."

It is somewhat depressing to have to revisit this lesson so soon after Health & Safety Week, but this news demonstrates that the theme for H&S Week 2016 - 'Inspiring excellence in health & safety' - is one that a lot of UK businesses could stand to think about. "Employers must do more", said Mr Green, and unless we as a country want to see that annual death toll continue to rise, we all need to ask ourselves if there's more we could be doing in our own offices, warehouses, and work sites. Have you identified all potential risks that your employees face? What are you doing to address those risks and prevent the worst from happening?

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