White: changing role
Fees for intervention added up to nearly three quarters of a million pounds in the first two months of the new regime in which contractors are charged for inspectors’ time if they breach health and safety rules, Philip White, the HSE’s chief inspector for construction revealed this week. White also said that virtually all of 433 sites revealed this week as breaching safety rules in a month long HSE blitz of refurbishment projects would be charged for intervention.
White, who is moving on to a new role in the HSE at the end of this week after four years as chief inspector for construction, also criticised the poor welfare facilities that many workers were being subjected to across the UK’s construction sites.
White said that 1,418 invoices were issued for the health and safety breaches in the first two months – October and November – amounting to £728,000. Invoices went out in January. Since then invoices have been sent out for those breaching rules in December and January, which have yet to be totalled. Those who have found to breach legislation in February and March including the 433 caught out in this latest blitz will receive invoices in May. These latest tranche of charges are expected to take the bill for contractors to well over £1m.
In this latest crackdown, which took place between 18 February and 15 March, one in five construction sites visited across Britain have been subject to enforcement action after failing safety checks. Inspectors from the HSE visited a total of 2,363 sites where refurbishment or repair work was taking place and saw 2,976 contractors. A total of 631 enforcement notices were served across 433 sites for poor practices that could put workers at risk, with 451 notices ordering that work stop immediately until the situation was put right.
A total of 631 enforcement notices were served across 433 sites for poor practices in the latest HSE blitz
Checks were also carried out on whether there was general good order on site, whether PPE was being used effectively and if welfare facilities were adequate. White said:
“It never ceases to amaze me how poor welfare facilities – like hot running water, toilets and places to eat – are on sites.”
White said that the majority of breaches in this latest blitz were to do with working at height and were predominantly on smaller sites. He said there appeared to be have been a stagnation in improvement in H&S in the last year and the HSE would keep up the pressure on the industry to comply with good health and safety practice. However, compared with 10 years ago, there had been a noticeable improvement.
During 2011/12 49 workers were killed while working in construction and 2,884 major injuries were reported. White has also recently criticised the proliferation of health and safety card schemes and called for consolidation.
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The way that Philip White talks in this article there seems to be an assumption that the intervention fees are in themselves going to resolve the HSE issue. This is absolute rubbish. This is simply a cover for the Government cuts in various areas of public sector spend. Businesses are already funding HSE through tax payments. Please stop linking the fees with improvments. One assumes that the HSE fees will be reinvested in free training programmes for small businesses and not just fed up to the Treasury. I suspect not!!!
The HSE have a hard job on their hands. What makes construction industry unique, despite making greater strides in reducing site accidents, is in character with the way in which business is arranged. The majority of work is carried out by smaller contractors. These are the ones where the focus on training ought to be directed. Principal contractors appoint such contractors to undertake sometimes very difficult and risky jobs – under the disguise of ‘specialist’ packages. These arrangements are tricky and difficult to unravel should things go wrong. The smaller subby has no choice either – take the risks or take the bike! Unfortunately, something has to give in and Health and Safety comes immediately to the lips of a subby. In most cases, it is the bigger contractors who strategically avoid the risky packages that come back to cramp down on subbies who may try to wiggleout by cutting corners. Thus on one hand subbies are constrained and worse still should they price heavily for safety they end up being the most pricey and risk losing a bid. So who should be targeted for these hefty charges? the subbies or the bigger contractors?
Why does the HSE endorse such a low quality form of education for construction managers, such as SMSTS? Why do they not require site managers to be competent? The entire industry has been using the CSCS card system, yet site managers are only required to take a 4 day course with a 97.5% pass rate. Does the HSE recieve a percentage kick back from the course providers for their endorsement? Why not insist that site managers must hold the benchmark standard for the position that they hold? By allowing inexperienced managers who have no more qualifications other than a 4 day course, does this not increase the likelihood of fines being administered?