Construction fatalities: some kind of silver lining

It's perhaps a statement of the obvious, but the current economic choppiness is likely to produce the reduction in construction industry fatalities and major accidents that industry bodies and government have made such a priority over the past year.

All over the country, construction projects are being mothballed, completion dates are being pushed back by two or three years (which amounts to the same thing) and housebuilders' profitability has fallen off a cliff (Bovis down 84% in six months, Taylor Wimpey £1.54 million into the red over the same period).

More importantly, retail sales figures show consumers shying away from bigger purchases, as they always do in a downturn. And if householders aren't buying fridges and flat screens, they certainly aren't going to be pressing on with extensions and loft conversions, which means a lot less activity in the refurbishment sector, whose small contractors contribute a disproportionate number of construction fatalities.

Obviously, the builders' federations and the HSE aren't going to take credit or comfort for a cut in accidents because of a cut in the number of building projects. Their focus is, as it should be, on the accident rates, which control for fluctuations in activity that distort the overall totals.

But a temporary reduction overall might provide some breathing space to arrange some of the measures they have proposed to help cut accident rates in the medium term. At the summit called by the then work and pensions secretary Peter Hain to tackle a 30% rise in deaths on building sites, the representatives of various federations and unions came up with all sorts of ideas. These ranged from health and safety information distributed at "point of sale" in builders' merchants, to complulsory safety passports for all construction workers.

But they were only ideas and, though there has been work on some of them since, they will take time. However painful for the contractors themselves and all the self-employed workers in the industry, a quiet period could provide some "swing space" to get better preventative measures in place.

The Safety Offences Bill in the Lords

I've just been reading the second reading debate in the House of Lords on the Health and Safety Offences Bill (just to recap, a Private Member's Bill on higher fines and potential prison sentences for health and safety offences, which looks likely to get through because it has government support).

You get a better class of debate in the Lords. The Earl of Mar and Kellie (the title's from Fife) raises some points about the Bill, some of which are answered, but i do love his turn of phrase:

"...Thirdly, the Bill allows for the imprisonment of the body corporate, but it is not at all clear about how the human representatives of the body corporate will be chosen. How will they be selected? This reminds me of the wretched whipping boy supplied to take the punishment of the youthful King James VI in George Buchanan’s schoolroom. Fourthly, I can see considerable impact on minute-takers and pressure on them after each meeting to establish and record who had reservations about each corporate decision. Fifthly, is there not a better reality for corporate imprisonment? Rather than directors or senior staff being imprisoned, is not corporate loss of liberty in fact suspension from trading? Does the Bill not attempt to dismantle the concept of a separate legal persona for businesses? Sixthly, Network Rail has suggested amendments which reduce the imprisonable to those who are personally and identifiably guilty. Seventhly, Network Rail also points out that, without such clarification, someone who had not attended the trial could be imprisoned—a sort of contracted blame-taker."