Tag: news

Coronavirus (COVID-19): Business Resources

Posted on by Editor
More information about our COVID-19 eLearning course can be found here: https://safesmart.co.uk/coronavirus-covid-19-awareness/

As industries slowly re-open and schools & businesses resume operations, it is of utmost priority to ensure that work premises of all types are risk assessed for COVID-19, necessary control measures are applied, and all employees are fully trained on minimizing the transmission of the coronavirus.

Brand New Courses

In order to help our customers navigate through the health & safety challenges which the COVID-19 pandemic presents – and its legal & practical impact on key business functions, Safesmart has created a Coronavirus (COVID-19) Awareness training course utilising the latest information available from Public Health England, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the NHS and the Health & Safety Executive (HSE).

This course provides information about the following practical measures that can be implemented by businesses – if necessary:

  • Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
  • Hand sanitizer/disinfectant
  • Temperature checking
  • Clear Signage
  • Working from home
  • Social distancing/restricting numbers

A Safe Working from Home eLearning course is also available to help protect against the dangers associated with DSE for those employees working from home.

Re-opening Schools

Along with a separate COVID-19 eLearning course for educational institutions, an in-depth COVID-19 Risk Assessment Checklist has also been created to ensure that schools and colleges re-open as safely as possible – and within government guidelines.

Safesmart to launch £50,000 school kit sponsorship grant

Posted on by Melusi Chirikure

Last summer, Milton Keynes won its bid to be named as a European City of Sport for 2020 – awarded by the European Cities and Capitals of Sport Federation (ACES Europe); and to celebrate this achievement, Safesmart is launching a school kit sponsorship grant worth £50,000 over the next decade.

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.

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.

Last Week in Health and Safety

Posted on by Melusi Chirikure
Color, Egg, Broken

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.

HSE releases 2018/19 health & safety figures: The key takeaways

Posted on by Melusi Chirikure
The 2018/19 Health and safety statistics summary can be found on: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/

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.

Bibliography

HSE (2019) ‘Health and safety statistics’. Available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/ (accessed: 11/11/2019)

HSE (2019) ‘Workplace fatal injuries in Great Britain, 2019’. Available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/pdf/fatalinjuries.pdf (accessed: 12/11/2019)

HSE (2019) ‘Kinds of accident statistics in Great Britain, 2019’. Available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causinj/kinds-of-accident.pdf (accessed: 12/11/2019)

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)

HSE (-) ‘European comparisons’. Available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/european/ (accessed: 12/11/2019)

HSE (2019) ‘Health and Safety statistics in the United Kingdom, 2019’. Available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/european/european-comparisons.pdf (accessed: 12/11/2019)

HSE (2019) ‘Enforcement statistics in Great Britain, 2019’. Available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/enforcement.pdf

HSE (2019) ‘LFS – Labour Force Survey – Self-reported work-related ill health and workplace injuries: Index of LFS tables’. Available at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/lfs/index.htm#illness (accessed: 13/11/2019)

Safesmart releases Asset Management System

Posted on by Melusi Chirikure
Asset Management, smartlog
Asset Management features barcode tagging & scanning, media attachments, bulk asset uploading and one-button reporting.

At the tail-end of July, Safesmart released an Asset Management system – the biggest update to Smartlog since the current version of Accident Reporting was introduced within the release of Smartlog 5 in September 2016.

Utilising an in-depth and interactive asset registering system and centralising compliance management are both desirable objectives for an organisation; especially in the education and healthcare sectors where regular government body inspections are carried out, and equipment, certificates and licenses have to be valid and up-to-date.

For no added cost to Smartlog customers, our Asset Management system achieves both the aforementioned objectives, providing vast monitoring capabilities in relation to overall compliance as well as asset value tracking – such as depreciation, damage, repair and item condemnation/write-off.

However because the management of assets/inventory does not consistently intersect with health & safety compliance, deficiencies within Asset Management will not be included in the ‘Checks & Tests’ facility on Smartlog – displayed separately instead within the Asset Management facility itself; but automated email alerts and hierarchical escalation remain.

Also featuring barcode scanning & tagging, media attachments, bulk asset uploading and one-button reporting; the facility has the capabilities and versatility to be utilised as a high-gear inventory control system or as a simple digital asset register.

You can read more about Asset Management here.

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