There's been a few stories this year of people being seriously injured by large animals. The latest is an ex-dairy farmer who won £60,000 compensation for being attacked by a cow, see here. It's difficult not to smile instinctively at the thought of normally docile animals being a threat (there's a kind of Keyestone cops folk memory of the policeman bending down and being kicked by the horse, or Carry-on characters being chased by bulls across fields, which is hard to shift and your average cow doesn't exactly look threatening) but the sheer weight of these animals can make anyone one facing one moving at speed feel like a very moveable object.
The HSE's figures show an average of 49 agricultural deaths each year from 1997 to 2007 (the headline stats are on the executive's main agriculture page ) and it looks like only five of those are due to contact with livestock. I'd be interested in the totals for less serious injuries. Might go and look...
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Monday, 18 August 2008
Work at height prosecutions - the figures
Dr Dave Merchant of http://www.uvsar.com/ who, when he's not scaling new heights himself, advises other people on how to do it safely, has been collating the figures for prosecutions last year under the Work at Height Regulations and sent me a breakdown of the parts of the Regulations the HSE has cited in the cases it brought.
The most common charge (in 46 cases) was a failure to meet Regulation 6, which covers the need for risk assessment, avoiding work at height if it can be carried out safely in another wayand using suitable control measures to stop fall injuries where the work is unavoidable. As a catch-all for what usually goes wrong, it makes sense this is the most common charge
Regulation 4 is next with 28 charges. This covers failure to organise and plan WAH. As Dave puts it, "People who haven't made any effort to even read the regs get done under 4.1 ". Most of them come down to accidents using portable ladders.
Interesting to see that only 14 cases involved a charge of failing to take precaustion where employees were working around fragine surfaces at height (Reg 9). I'd swear that we reported on more cases of employees who fell through rooflights and asbestos roof panels last year.
For those of you who know the Regs well, i'm including Dave's table below. He's written us some very very good articles on different aspects of work at height, including one on the dangers of caged ladders (a subject the HSE seems to have become quite shy about) which i really recommend.
Reg /Charges/ Title
1 /N/A /Citation and commencement
2 /N/A /Interpretation
3 /N/A /Application
4 /28 /Organisation and planning
5/ 2 /Competence
6 /45/ Avoidance of risks from work at height
7 /3 /Selection of work equipment for work at height
8 /12 /Requirements for particular work equipment
9 /14 /Fragile surfaces
10/ 6 /Falling objects
11 /0 /Danger areas
12 /5/ Inspection of work equipment
13 /0 /Inspection of places of work at height
14 /0 /Duties of persons at work - Special provision in relation to
caving and climbing
15 /N/A / Exemption by the Health and Safety Executive
16 /N/A / Exemption for the armed forces
17 / N/A /Amendment of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment
Regulations 1998
18 /N/A /Repeal of section 24 of the Factories Act 1961
19 /N/A / Revocation of instruments
The most common charge (in 46 cases) was a failure to meet Regulation 6, which covers the need for risk assessment, avoiding work at height if it can be carried out safely in another wayand using suitable control measures to stop fall injuries where the work is unavoidable. As a catch-all for what usually goes wrong, it makes sense this is the most common charge
Regulation 4 is next with 28 charges. This covers failure to organise and plan WAH. As Dave puts it, "People who haven't made any effort to even read the regs get done under 4.1 ". Most of them come down to accidents using portable ladders.
Interesting to see that only 14 cases involved a charge of failing to take precaustion where employees were working around fragine surfaces at height (Reg 9). I'd swear that we reported on more cases of employees who fell through rooflights and asbestos roof panels last year.
For those of you who know the Regs well, i'm including Dave's table below. He's written us some very very good articles on different aspects of work at height, including one on the dangers of caged ladders (a subject the HSE seems to have become quite shy about) which i really recommend.
Reg /Charges/ Title
1 /N/A /Citation and commencement
2 /N/A /Interpretation
3 /N/A /Application
4 /28 /Organisation and planning
5/ 2 /Competence
6 /45/ Avoidance of risks from work at height
7 /3 /Selection of work equipment for work at height
8 /12 /Requirements for particular work equipment
9 /14 /Fragile surfaces
10/ 6 /Falling objects
11 /0 /Danger areas
12 /5/ Inspection of work equipment
13 /0 /Inspection of places of work at height
14 /0 /Duties of persons at work - Special provision in relation to
caving and climbing
15 /N/A / Exemption by the Health and Safety Executive
16 /N/A / Exemption for the armed forces
17 / N/A /Amendment of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment
Regulations 1998
18 /N/A /Repeal of section 24 of the Factories Act 1961
19 /N/A / Revocation of instruments
Wednesday, 13 August 2008
Careful who you call
According to the Guardian, the HSE and local authorities will be able to request internet service providers and phone companies to hand over records of email and phone exchanges as part of their investigations into safety breaches. The HSE and other public bodies will be able to ask for data that the telecoms companies will now have to store for a month under a new EU Directive.
They won't be able to access the content of the phone and email traffic, just the logs of who wrote to or called whom, to help them in their investigations.
It's the sort of thing that might be useful to investigators looking at a corporate manslaughter charge and would mean that any compromising email that passed through an ISP couldn't simply be wiped from the system and forgotten. There are enough warnings from lawyers about howmuch you should say in accident reports that might end up disclosed to an investigating authority, and here's another reason for caution.
The Guardian piece is here
They won't be able to access the content of the phone and email traffic, just the logs of who wrote to or called whom, to help them in their investigations.
It's the sort of thing that might be useful to investigators looking at a corporate manslaughter charge and would mean that any compromising email that passed through an ISP couldn't simply be wiped from the system and forgotten. There are enough warnings from lawyers about howmuch you should say in accident reports that might end up disclosed to an investigating authority, and here's another reason for caution.
The Guardian piece is here
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