Top bosses challenged to take lead in bringing down Britain's £18 billion health and safety costs
Top bosses challenged to take lead in bringing down Britain's £18 billion health and safety costsKeywords:Health and safety, Costs
The Heath and Safety Commission (HSC) and the Government challenged Britain's top 350 companies to take the lead in bringing down the country's annual bill of between £14-18 billion caused by injuries and ill-health at work.
HSC chair, Bill Callaghan, and Environment Minister Michael Meacher, have sent a direct appeal to the big names in British industry to:
set ambitious and achievable targets for improving their companies' health and safety performance;
include their companies' health and safety performance in their 2001/2002 annual report – and each year thereafter;
report back by the end of May 2001 on progress made.
In order to help companies to achieve this objective, the HSC has issued guidance on the criteria and method that companies might use in order to report annually on their health and safety record and achievements.
HSC chair, Bill Callaghan, said: "Every year the British economy loses billions because some employers have failed to meet their health and safety responsibilities, while the toll in terms of human suffering is unacceptable. We are looking to big business to take the lead in cutting work-related deaths,injuries and ill-health."
He continued: "Health and safety needs to be a priority issue in every company boardroom and I would welcome the opportunity to meet the directors in each of the firms we have contacted today. I understand that business success is the ultimate goal of any commercial organisation, but there is no reason why this should ever be at the expense of the workforce's safety and well-being.
"Moreover, work-related accidents and ill-health represent a huge economic drain in terms of lost production, rehabilitation costs, compensation and legal expenses. My view remains, if you cannot manage health and safety,then you cannot manage."
Mr Callaghan went on to emphasise the role he sees for Britain's industry leaders: "The firms we have contacted exercise considerable influence and are in a position to provide an excellent example to smaller employers. This initiative is designed – as much as anything – to identify good practice, which we will recognise formally and seek to share throughout industry as a whole. We need a constructive partnership in order to get results and have decided to 'start big'. Once we have learned the lessons of this exercise, we will consider extending it to all firms with more than 250 employees."
In conclusion, Mr Callaghan said: "We will be looking carefully at the response we receive from this initiative and will be advising Ministers of the results. The proposed arrangements are all voluntary and I would welcome a constructive response. We expect all 350 employers to rise to the challenge. And if they don't, we will want to know why."
Around 25 million working days are lost each year as a result of work-related injuries and ill-health. Approximately two million people suffer from work-related ill-health and 25,000 people a year have to give up work because of it. In 1998/1999 there were a]most 29,000 major injuries to workers and 131,000 people had to take more than three days off work as a result of a work-related injury. Details of the economic toll of health and safety failures are contained and explained in the HSE publication, The Costs to Britain of Workplace Accidents and wWork-related Ill-health in 1995/96, ISBN No: 0-7176-1709-2.
The Revitalising Health and Safety initiative was launched by Bill Callaghan and the Deputy Prime Minister, on 7 June 2000. It includes a 44-point action plan which aims to achieve, by the year 2010, the following targets: a 30 per cent reduction in the incidence of working days lost through work-related illness and injury; a 20 per cent reduction in the incidence of people suffering from work-related ill-health; and a 10 per cent reduction in the rate of fatal and major injuries. There is an additional target to achieve half of each improvement by 2004.
Every company must have a health and safety policy by law. It is not currently UK law for companies to include health and safety in their annual reports – although HSC/E consider it good practice to do so. The new guidance on annual reporting sets out the minimum standards for what annual reports should say about health and safety. This includes: outlining the company's health and safety policy; significant risks faced by employees/others and the strategies and systems in place for controlling those risks; the company's health and safety goals/targets, which should be measurable and relate to the health and safety policy; details of progress towards achieving goals/targets; plans for the forthcoming period; and arrangements for consulting employees and involving safety reps.
In addition, the report should include data on the company's health and safety performance, including: the number of injuries, illnesses and dangerous occurrences, reportable under the 1995 Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR); details of any fatalities and remedial action taken; the number of physical or mental work-induced health problems reported for the first time during that period; the number of employee days lost through work-related illness or injury; the number of health and safety enforcement or prohibition notices served on the company, with brief details; the number and nature of health and safety convictions for the period in question, including fines imposed and remedial action taken; and the total cost to the company of work-related injuries and illness suffered by staff over the reporting period.
The HSC's guidance on Health and Safety in Annual Reports is available online at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/revital/annual.htmPaper copies of the guidance and further information are available from Steve Vinton, Strategy Division, Health and Safety Executive, 8th floor South Wing,Rose Court, 2 Southwark Bridge, London SE1 9HS. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7717 6954.
Public enquiries: for general enquiries, call HSE's InfoLine: Tel: +44 (0)8701 545500, or write to: HSE Information Centre, Broad Lane, Sheffield, S3 7HQ,UK.
