The sponsorship grant will be open exclusively to all schools that are Safesmart customers using the health and safety compliance software Smartlog; with Milton Keynes local St Mary and St Giles Church of England School becoming the first official recipient of the award.
— St Mary and St Giles C of E School (@StMaryandStGil1) January 24, 2020
Headteacher Kate Holland said:
“We are delighted that a local business has so kindly chosen to sponsor our football team. We are extremely grateful for Safesmart’s support.”
Also adding:
“With school budgets becoming tighter, this sort of support goes a long way in encouraging all to succeed in sport.”
All schools which use Smartlog for their health and safety compliance will be eligible to apply directly for the grant a maximum of once each per year, with each successful individual award being worth up to £500.
The formal application process will open in April 2020, with successful recipients being announced before the school summer holidays.
A quick round-up of the biggest health and safety stories from the week commencing 18th November 2019:
A ‘No-light’ Christmas in Penbury
Last week Kent County Council refused to issue a Christmas lights permit for Penbury because the planned lights and decorations are twice as heavy as the lamp posts can safely hold. This last minute decision by the council has left no room for alternative arrangements. Full story here.
Egg production
company ordered to shell out over £60,000 in fines
A Lancashire egg production company was fined £60,000 by the HSE after a forklift overturned and seriously injured its driver.
“Companies should be aware that HSE will not hesitate to take appropriate enforcement action against those that fall below the required standards” said the HSE inspector, as Staveley’s Eggs Ltd were also ordered to pay costs of £4,259.42. Full story here.
Combustible cladding
concerns could involve ‘more than 100,000 buildings’
According to Inside Housing, minutes from a September meeting between representatives of London boroughs and government officials revealed that reducing the official high-rise building threshold from 18-metres to 11-metres would raise the amount of buildings under scrutiny from just 12,000 to over 100,000. Full story here.
The HSE have released the annual health and safety figures for the year 2018/2019, and here are the key takeaways:
1. Work related ill-health cases are a mixed bag:
The cases for new and long-standing illnesses last year totalled 1.36 million; and this year’s figure is down ever so slightly (1.35 million); however work-related musculoskeletal disorder cases (498,000) are up from last year (470,000) by a large 28,000 cases.
Stress, depression or anxiety cases (which made up 44% of all illness cases last year and an almost identical 45% this year) are up by around 6,000 and are responsible for 54% of all working days lost due to illness this year. However, working days missed due to stress, depression or anxiety are 2.7 million less than last year; a significant improvement.
Overall, working days lost due to all work-related ill health are down by almost 3.5 million; however the annual total costs of illness to businesses (around £15 billion) has remained unchanged from last year.
2. Fatal injuries to workers have gone up:
In 2017/18 there were 141 worker fatalities and in 2018/19 the figure is
up to 147, which is the joint highest figure for 6 years but slightly lower (149)
than the ten-year average since 2009/10. However a downward trend still remains
overall, with the latest ten-year average a full 56% lower than the previous decade’s
average of 233 fatalities a year.
3. Workplace fatal injuries to members of the public have gone down:
Fatal injuries to members of the public have declined from last year,
with the latest figure of 92 the lowest since 1996 and well below the 1999 to 2019
twenty-year average of 322* fatalities. In Europe as a whole, the UK still retains
a lower workplace fatality rate than Germany, Italy, France and Spain – in fact
the UK three-year average rate for 2013-2015 was the lowest of all EU member
states.
*Major changes in 2013/14 and 2015/16 to what is included in public
fatalities figures should be taken into account when interpreting these
statistics.
4. Less people are getting injured at work:
This year there were 2,323 less non-fatal injuries than last year (69,208 injuries compared to last year’s figures of 71,531). This latest figure is the lowest recorded since 1985, and the rate of non-fatal injuries to workers has shown a long-term downward trend overall. As a result, 28.2 million working days this year were lost due to work-related ill-health and non-fatal injuries compared to 30.7 million days last year; a significant improvement.
5. The HSE prosecuted less cases this year
2017/18 saw 11,522 notices issued by enforcing bodies, 493 cases prosecuted (or referred to COPFS in Scotland) by the HSE, and £72.6 million in fines from such convictions; and 2018/19 saw slightly less issued notices (11,040), more than 120 less prosecutions (364) and £54.5 million in fines — £18.1 million less than last year. However, the average fine per case this year is similar to last year (£150,000 and £148,000 respectively), which indicates that the significant drop in fines is most likely a result of the fall in HSE prosecutions.
HSE (2019) ‘Historical picture statistics in Great Britain, 2019 – trends in work-related ill health and workplace injury’. Available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/history/index.htm (accessed: 12/11/2019)
We are pleased to announce that our online training courses are now CPD certified on their 1st submission. All our online training courses have been created by our health & safety, fire safety and compliance experts and on Tuesday the CPD Certification Service informed us that our 20 online training courses on Smartlog 5 meet their standards. This is testament to their detail & quality.
The CPD certification service have independently checked that the material in our training courses meets their standards.
Safesmart now provide ‘CPD Certified’ online training to unlimited users at an affordable price per site location.
‘The CPD Service’s recognised and authoritative CPD Member and CPD Certified symbols offer institutional associations, educational providers and consumers alike reassurance that the material concerned achieves the qualitative standards required by all parties.’ www.cpduk.co.uk/about
We raised £1,122 pounds for Children in Need on Friday the 16th of November.
On the day staff also made donations and took part in donation entry spot themed games such as a Connect 4 championship and a charity raffle for a Christmas hamper. This was amongst our work and our fire safety engineers on the road even sent in pictures of their decorations for the day. The prize for the Connect 4 champion was an extra day of holiday and so things got tense and competitive too. There was also a prize for the best dressed which went to Ramos for his awesome unicorn style outfit with his colorful waistcoat and hat. He is very happy to feature in the MK Citizen as a unicorn ☺
It was a fun day had by all raising money for an excellent cause. It’s great that MK Citizen featured us and we hope our activity may inspire more SMEs in Milton Keynes and around the UK to take part and be creative with fundraising ideas.
We hope to go bigger next year and support more charities that keep people safe in line with our mission to improve safety, efficiency and affordability.
This Friday the 16th of November we are holding a Children in Need event at our office in Milton Keynes whereby we will give 1p for every spot that is used as decoration or worn and brought to work up to our target of 100,000 spots. We are an SME and so 100,000 spots is the maximum on this occasion but as we grow we continue to engage with more charities to not only help keep people safe with our health & safety software and services but with charitable giving where possible.
We thought of the idea from Pudsey’s spots on his bandage. Hopefully by mentioning what we’re doing, our idea of 1p per spot could resonate with you and others to help with fundraising ideas and the promotion of Children in Need.
Children in need is an excellent charity that helps hundreds of thousands of children across the UK every year. Their website mentions on 13/11/18 that they are currently supporting 2,400 projects all across the UK.
BBC Children in Need announced that its fundraising total for the 2017 Appeal was £60,750,000. The 2017 total was the collective efforts of every single person across the UK who did something to raise money, from sponsored runs to sponsored silences and bake sales.
BBC Children in Need’s vision is that every child in the UK has a childhood which is:
– Safe
– Happy and Secure
– Allows them the chance to reach their potential
Safesmart’s brand purpose and vision is to improve safety, efficiency and affordability. We also help to keep children safe in thousands of schools across the country as the Preferred Supplier for the Association of School and College Leaders. We help to keep children and adults safe in all industry sectors we supply whilst also supporting charities by providing our Smartlog software to them. Large well-known UK Charities use Smartlog to ensure safety and compliance across their operations.
Did you know? Pudsey Bear made his television debut in 1985 when Terry Wogan introduced the new, brown cuddly mascot to the audience. He was designed by Joanna Ball, a BBC graphics designer, who named him after the West Yorkshire town where she was born.
This year’s live BBC Children in Need appeal show will take place on Friday evening and promises to be an exciting spectacle of music, dance and entertainment. Hosted by Graham Norton, Tess Daly, Ade Adepitan, Mel Giedroyc, Rob Beckett, Marvin and Rochelle Humes, it will be a fantastic night, raising money for disadvantaged children and young adults here in the UK who need our support, and also celebrating and thanking the fundraisers who do so much.
We hope you will also take part in fundraising and donate to this great cause.
In November last year we organised the first-ever Health and Safety for Apprenticeships Conference.
Safesmart decided to run this free conference to help UK employers understand their obligations and improve the safety of apprentices in the workplace.
We named it the ‘Health & Safety for Apprenticeships Conference’ with free registration through Eventbrite.
As far we’re aware it was first conference of its kind to focus on the specific topic of Health & Safety for Apprenticeships.
With lots of information in the news about the apprenticeship levy and the increasing number of young people choosing apprenticeships to start their career we feel it is vital to inform employers of the required Health & Safety legislation, their obligations and also ways to reduce risks in the work place for young people as well as older staff carrying out further training in new environments.
The purpose of the conference was to inform and makes things clear for employers as well as suggest tips to reduce risk for both young and older apprentices.
The free conference presentation can be downloaded: here
Some useful stats and links about health and safety & apprentices:
RoSPA inquiry into apprentices May 2016 – ‘HSE’s statistics are in age groupings and do not distinguish between young workers who are apprentices, on work experience or are just workers who are young. Nor do they give a true indication of the relative risk faced by young workers because they do not compare like for like, for example, the rate of injuries for persons under 25 and over 25 doing the same job.’ https://www.rospa.com/rospaweb/docs/advice-services/occupational-safety/noshc/rospa-inquiry-into-apprentices-report.pdf
21st World Congress on Safety and Health at Work (3 to 6 September 2017 in Singapore)
Protecting apprentices in the workplace – ‘In January 2013, a 16 year old engineering apprentice, Cameron Minshull, tragically lost his life after becoming entangled in a lathe. Prosecutors in Cameron’s case alleged that his employer used apprentices as “cheap labour”, had a history of failing to train them properly and had a “grossly unsafe” system of work.’ http://strongerunions.org/2015/07/16/protecting-apprentices-in-the-workplace/
Wouldn’t say that ‘Young workers are ignoring health & safety’ but perhaps this survey shows more needs to be done – ‘The survey of 2,000 employees, working for businesses that have over five employees, found that 27 percent of workers aged between 18 and 34 have put themselves at risk by not following their companies’ safety procedures.’ https://www.thehrdirector.com/business-news/gen-y/young-workers-ignoring-health-safety/
You are now able to upload photo images to your risk assessments. When answering a question you now have an option to upload an image. For guidance steps please see the help sheet within Help.
Welcome to the new Safesmart website. We hope it explains the wide range of services that we offer in the fire and health and safety industry.
We’ll also be using this news area to keep you up to date with our products and services and any industry news that we think may interest our customers.
If you would like any information or a quote for our solutions, please visit our contact page.
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