Construction Health and Safety – HSE inspections reveal many problems

Construction Health and Safety: The HSE is urging the construction industry (as a whole) to do better to ensure that basic health and safety measures are in place. This follows after a month long inspection initiative (22 September to 17 October 2014) that found 40 per cent of sites failing to protect workers properly.

Unacceptable conditions and dangerous practices were found at nearly half of the 1,748 repair and refurbishment sites visited by HSE inspectors, with 20% of sites considered to be so poor that formal enforcement action was required. Many of the issues found could have been easily prevented with simple, straightforward management and planning. The focus of the initiative was on health risks and 35 per cent of the notices served were for issues such as management of asbestos, failure to control exposure to harmful dusts, noise and vibration, and insufficient welfare.

Unsurprisingly, failure to provide basic safety measures for people working at height was again found to be a very common issue found by Inspectors looking at construction health and safety, with 42 per cent of all enforcement notices served for this activity.

The HSEs Chief of Construction, Mr  Philip White said:

“These results show that whilst the majority of employers in the refurbishment sector are getting it right, a significant part of the industry is seriously failing its workers.

The inability to properly plan working at height continues to be a major issue, despite well-known safety measures being straightforward to implement. It is just not acceptable that Inspectors had to order work to stop immediately on over 200 occasions because of dangerous practices.

We also find health is often overlooked as its implications are not immediately visible, however the effects of uncontrolled exposure to deadly dusts such as asbestos and silica can be irreversible. We urge industry to ensure the most basic of measures such as use of protective equipment and dust suppression methods are put in place to help protect the future health of workers.

We need to continue to educate industry through initiatives like this and encourage a change in behaviour on small projects where over half the industry’s fatal accidents still occur and many workers become seriously ill.”

A summary breakdown of the construction health and safety inspection findings is shown below:

• Poor standards/dangerous practices at 40% of sites visited (691 of 1748)
• On 360 (one in five) sites, practices so poor that enforcement action needed.
• 313 prohibition notices issued
• 235 improvement notices issued
• The most common issues identified related to work at height and falls (42%), failure to control dust (12%), insufficient welfare (12%) and asbestos (10%).
• In total 35% of notices were served for health issues (asbestos, dust, noise, vibration, welfare, manual handling).