Hello and welcome to the September edition of the monthly health and safety news letter.
The tragic death of a 44 year old male worker on the London Underground report-ed in the last week, apparently crushed whilst working on a travellator at Waterloo Station.
Despite the best efforts of paramedics and fire crews they were unable to help him
Inevitably the Health and Safety Executive will carry out an investigation to deter-mine the cause and any subsequent legal liability on his Employers.
It may not mean a great deal to us, but I start this edition to remind us all of the fragility of life, and how quickly it can be lost– work is certainly not worth taking risks or adopting unsafe practices just to get the job done. Please be careful, you owe it to yourself and your families.
We should at least appreciate the effect of his loss to his family, friends and co-workers.
Safety audits and inspections
Many of you have asked us in the past to carry out some form of auditing relating to your own Companies safety compliance.
Monitor and review of health and safety performance is a legal requirement placed on all Employers.
Auditing is a general term and I thought it would be helpful to make a quick dis-tinction between Monitoring, auditing, inspections, and to also look at the benefits of these performance measurement methods.
Monitoring health and safety performance should be simple enough to under-stand, simply it means to have some awareness on how a Company is performing in terms of accidents, ill health, when carrying out its work activities or services.
An audit generally involves a review of all written health and safety management procedures, including Policies, Training and inspection records, from which a de-termination of how you are complying by virtue of proof and evidence.
Inspection – involves a walk over a workplace such as a factory floor, or construc-tion site and to assess the safety performance of the workers, and also to assess the safe or unsafe condition of the work place such that it is safe, and free from any unnecessary or uncontrolled hazards, such as broken, damaged or missing equipment,
All of the above, when carried our diligently and accurately will help Business owners gain an independent and unbiased Professional view on where the Com-panies Health and Safety performance rates against National and legislative standards
It enables weaknesses to be identified in a proactive way, thereby enabling cor-rective measures to be introduced to improve inadequate or unsatisfactory condi-tions or behaviours.
Measuring performance helps prevent situations developing at work that could lead to injury, or ill health, so its clearly vital you do it.
