Hampshire County Council annual health and safety report for 2004-2005
Introduction
Risks
Performance
for 2004/5
Accidents/incidents and other related statistical data
Definitions
Plans
for 2005/6
Introduction
This report covers the year from March 2004 to April 2005. The aim is to provide the public of Hampshire and others interested in health and safety with information on what the County Council is doing to protect its employees, volunteers, contractors, clients and service users, pupils and members of the public.
Health and safety in the County Council is part of the overall Risk Management Strategy, which aims to identify and manage risks to the County Council and its services to the public. Health and safety focuses on the risks of injury and ill health that can arise from the wide range of activities necessary to deliver the services to the people of Hampshire.
You can view Hampshire County Council’s Health and Safety Policy Statement and Corporate Health and Safety Strategy.
Risks
The types of health and safety risks involved are varied, but can include:
Lone working
Violence and aggression
Transport and road risk
Manual handling risks
Slips and falls
Work related ill health, including work related stress.
An organisation with such a broad range of activities as the County Council has a wide variety of risks to manage and the above list represents only some of the most common risks from across the Council. To ensure that all risks are identified, the Council has risk assessment processes for use by managers and staff.
Our services are often delivered via partnerships arrangements. These can include a wide range of external organisations such as the NHS, charities, contractors and volunteers. By focussing on co-operation, communication and co-ordination with our partners, we aim to ensure that these operations are also managed as safely as is reasonably practicable.
To support management, the County Council employs a number of specialists, including Health and Safety Advisers, Occupational Health medical staff, trained counsellors who provide counselling and support for employees, Occupational Hygienists and a Fire Safety Manager. In the workplace over 470 trained safety representatives, both trade union nominated and non-trade union staff representatives, help monitor health and safety and represent employees during consultation.
Performance for 2004/5
The rate of the reportable accidents/incidents has remained relatively constant with incidents involving major injuries staying low.
During the year several programmes were run in the Council to improve health and safety including:
Each department has undertaken a programme to identify and train staff to manage premises related health and safety issues.
Work to develop an integrated approach to health and wellbeing at work has been established.
A new accident/incident reporting process has been introduced that has reduced some of the paperwork involved in reporting and investigating incidents.
Work has continued to develop departmental and corporate auditing programmes.
A review of the structure of health and safety has been undertaken and work to implement the recommendations will take place in the coming year.
Work has started on all of the objectives set out in the plans published last year, but not all have been completed. Some of this is due to resources being moved to other work activities and some where the task has proved more complex or more time consuming than was originally expected. Work to complete the activities will continue in the year 2005/6 along side this year’s plans.
As can be from the following statistics, the overall trend for accident data is downwards. This is most welcome and work continues to maintain and improve on this performance. Whilst it is not possible to provide a clear causal link to the work that has been done to improve safety, because the causes of incidents are often complex, there is confidence that this improvement is a result of all the efforts across the Council on improving safety behaviour and strengthening safety systems.
Sadly this year has also seen two fatalities, both involving vehicles. One was due to a road traffic incident where an employee was seriously injured and later died of their injuries. The second involved the death of a child on school property involving a vehicle. Deaths related to work are rare in local authorities, this is the first recorded work related death in the Council for more than six years, which was when the records were started, and probably much longer than that and to have two in one year is deeply tragic.
Accidents/incidents and other related statistical data
2001/2 |
2002/3 |
2003/4* |
2004/5 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Total number of incidents reported to the Health and Safety Executive |
143 |
172 |
124 |
93 |
|
Number of injuries causing over 3 day absences from work |
51 |
50 |
45 |
37 |
|
Number of major injuries (as defined in RIDDOR) |
10 |
7 |
2 |
1 |
|
Fatalities |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
|
Reportable Dangerous Occurrences (as defined in RIDDOR) |
3 |
4 |
5 |
2 |
|
Reportable work related illnesses (as defined in RIDDOR) |
1 |
1 |
0 |
2 |
|
Number of non-employees taken straight to hospital |
78 |
110 |
72 |
53 |
|
Days lost due to work related stress (as a percentage of total sickness absence in brackets) |
Not available |
Not available |
8875 (9.5 %) |
6401 (7.2%) |
|
Days lost due to work related injury and ill health (as a percentage of total sickness absence in brackets) |
Not available |
Not available |
1845 (2%) |
1774 (2%) |
|
Number of Improvement Notices served |
2 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
|
Number of Prohibition Notices served |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Prosecutions |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
|
Incidence rate for over 3 day injuries (number of over 3 day injuries per 100,000) |
244.04 |
207.82 |
164.09 |
147.78 |
|
Incidence rate for major injuries (number of major injuries per 100,000 employees) |
47.85 |
29.10 |
7.29 |
3.99 |
|
Number attending at health and safety training courses (internal) |
3,725 |
3,933 |
3,583 |
2,676 |
*Data for 2003/4 has been amended to reflect additional incidents missed due to system changes.
Definitions
RIDDOR
The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995. For definitions of major injury, dangerous occurrence, work related ill health, etc., visit the HSE webpages.
Plans for 2005/6
To run additional training for departmental facilities/premises managers.
To continue work auditing at a corporate and departmental level.
To ensure the implementation of the recommendations of the corporate review of health and safety.
To pilot the HSE’s Stress Standards Questionnaires and review the corporate Stress Policy in the light of the HSE’s Standards on Stress.