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.
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But pushing the other way is the idea that with profits ever smaller, corners will be cut more often and so the pro-rata accident rates will increase. H&S isn't supposed to be a luxury purchase, but unfortunately it often is.
The third argument is that with tighter finances, more people will have a go at DIY instead, so not being at work RIDDOR figures will drop but accidents won't.
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