The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recently conducted a month-long inspection programme to take a closer look at health and safety on Britain's construction sites. Its findings? 40% of the 1,748 construction sites visited failed the HSE's spot-checks. Worse still, 20% of the sites visited were so dreadfully non-compliant that the HSE was forced to pursue formal enforcement action against them - that's almost 350 sites in dire violation of basic health and safety laws!
Clearly, this country's construction industry needs to make more of an effort to protect its workers. Building sites can be very dangerous places, with all kinds of accidents just waiting to happen. Height safety was the area most commonly found lacking by the HSE's investigation, with workers repeatedly failing to take the measures necessary to prevent dangerous falls - this is particularly shameful, as height hazards tend to be very obvious and relatively easy to put right.
If you work on or are responsible for a construction site, you share in the responsibility to improve this dismal showing. Keep your eyes peeled for potential hazards, and if you see anything that you wouldn't want the HSE to see, act immediately! Health and safety regulations aren't there to cause headaches - they're there to save lives, and when all it takes is a safety sign or a strip of warning tape, there really is no excuse for letting your H&S standards slide.
Last week, BBC News reported on a proposal from the Sentencing Council that could see businesses in England and Wales hit with £20 million fines in cases of corporate manslaughter. If approved, this proposal will allow for signficantly harsher penalties on corporations whose negligence leads to a person's death.
In a nutshell, this means that companies could soon be paying a far higher price for fatal health and safety violations. This would make basic H&S measures more crucial than ever - many injuries and, yes, even deaths could have been prevented by such mundane things as safety labels and hazard warning signs. If the maximum fine is raised to £20,000,000 then corporations will be keener than ever to comply with regulations and provide a truly safe environment for their employees and the general public.
Really, though, the money shouldn't enter into it. If it takes a multi-million pound fine to make companies care about protecting human lives, we need to start asking some serious questions about those companies. The potential for fatal injury should be more than enough to spur business owners into action, and so while the BBC News report does indeed give companies an additional incentive to take health and safety seriously, we at Label Source would like to think that it will make no difference to responsible companies, who will always see the loss of life as a far graver penalty than any financial punishment.
September 2014 is a very important page of the Label Source calendar - as of this month we've been in business for a full twenty years! That's two decades of outstanding service and top-quality products, with absolutely no signs of slowing down.
Since Label Source was founded in 1994, we've built a glowing reputation for ourselves. Here's why we're still the #1 supplier of labels, tags, and safety signs:
- Comprehensive technical knowledge
- A huge range of high-calibre products
- 20 years of experience
- The complete package, offering an 'across the board' service
No matter what you need - whether it's a roll of sticky labels or a set of high-quality, fully-compliant signs for your workplace - LabelSource.co.uk will always be the very best place to find it. Here's to the next 20 years!
Vandalism is a shamefully common sight in modern Britain - whether it's graffiti, defacement, or general destruction, you can scarcely turn a corner these days without spotting some sort of pointless destruction.
But as unsightly as smashed-up bus shelters and spray-painted walls are, there's one particularly deplorable form of vandalism on which we'd like to focus: the defacement of safety signs. This appears to be something of a trend at the moment, and it's very worrying - people are rendering signs almost illegible, with no apparent consideration of the potential consequences.
This story from Inverclyde Now is a good example. Vandals have been defacing, damaging, and even stealing signs from several reservoirs in the Inverclyde area, and while such acts would be foolish and juvenile enough without the health and safety implications, the truly frightening part is just how important these signs and their messages are.
One such sign - given as an example in the IN article - reads:
"BE AWARE! Deaths have occurred at reservoirs"
The sign then goes on to list some of the dangers associated with reservoirs, such as deep water and steep, hidden embankments. Signs like these are designed to make people aware of potentially life-threatening hazards, and by removing/defacing these signs, vandals are sharply increasing the likelihood of a serious accident.
This problem isn't limited to Scottish reservoirs, either; it's happening all over the country. We recently read of some No Entry signs in Liverpool that had been removed by vandals, making the nature of the one-way street far less obvious to motorists. This is obviously a huge crash risk, and the signs will now have to be replaced using taxpayer money.
Authorities are urging vandals to consider the consequences of their actions and stop defacing important signs such as those mentioned above. If you ever see anybody vandalising or removing a safety sign, please report it to the police as a matter of urgency - you never know whose life you might save!
Earlier this week, The Daily Express reported that West Midlands Police have paid out a staggering £589,000 in health and safety compensation over the past year.
This money was awarded to officers for such incidents as:
- Slipping on a wet floor
- Getting bitten by dogs
- Falling off a chair
- Tripping over in the dark
The Express article contains a short interview with Ray Egan, who used to be part of the force. Mr Egan is quick to blame Britain's "claim culture", adding:
"It's like a disease and people are jumping on the bandwagon. It's embarrassing."
But while there can be no doubt that £589,000 is a ludicrous sum of money, we at Label Source are a little worried by Mr Egan's eagerness to blame the claimants. The "claim culture" to which he alludes is very real, but the backlash against this culture - neatly exemplified by that Express article - is equally real, and it could cause big problems if it goes unchecked.
We'll use the 'wet floor' claim as an example. If a floor is wet enough to cause slips, it is the EMPLOYER'S responsibility to place wet floor signs around the area in question. If the West Midlands force failed to fulfil this basic safety measure, then the officer who slipped is entitled to compensation - and why shouldn't he claim it?
It's also worth noting that the reported figure (£589k) does include legal costs. The actual amount given to officers was £328,100; this is hardly any more encouraging, but it's important not to exaggerate when it comes to stories like this.
We see a lot of 'health and safety gone mad' news stories every week, but while silly things do occasionally happen (see this story - also from the Express, as it happens - about a suspected burglar in a tree), we shouldn't be turning the British public against H&S as a practice. Likewise, we ought not to blame the victims for the mistakes of their employers; companies MUST adhere to health and safety guidelines or suffer the same consequence as the West Midlands Police.
