Derek Maylor Chairperson:

The coalition attacks on health and safety in the workplace continue and the TUC are to highlight the issues on Workers Memorial Day in April. There will be plenty of information available and links from this website to the latest downloads available will be updated as soon as website editor Chris is made aware of them.

It was interesting to attend the recent IIRSM breakfast meeting in London with Professor Lofstedt. Clearly his recent review did not bring to the Government what they were expecting and they have already misquoted it.

The Professor is well respected around Europe and he will not be happy with such an in depth study being abused, no academic would be. In one nice line he noted that health and safety isn't a burden on business but accidents and injuries are. The Olympic Games obviously has a huge international profile and the HSE have been keen to deliver them safely.

Largely through the third party management of contractors the new build is near completion and lessons have been learnt on integrating health and safety management through thorough planning.  Now it is up to Local Authorities, mainly from the four host boroughs but there are events around the country, to continue that work despite the cut backs. The implementation of the Health and Safety Laboratories Climate Tool appears to have been successful in the development of a good safety culture from the first day.

Much is said of the games legacy – a pity little of it [apart from in trade press] is how much improvement there was to the day-to-day safety of workers on the sites and how this should be the minimum target standard for construction.  
On the 5th January the Government set up a challenge panel to specifically to belittle, or challenge, regulatory advice. The panel will deal with disputes over specific advice given by HSE or LA regulators to dutyholders. However the panel will not be open to workers to access and challenge bad safety advice.

There was an small change to HSE and statistical incident data collection where we have long argued that the current data misses out the deaths of thousands killed by work. Now work place deaths are to be included even where that work was as a result of an illegal activity and where it had been possible to undertake the activity legally.

In conclusion, we aim to provide the best advice and representation for our members and to:

*Ensure a safe working environment
*Promote occupational health
*Help members raise safety concerns
*Advance industry best practice
*Provide representation at national meetings
*Raise issues with other safety or government bodies

Our greatest assets are our Union Safety Representatives and we fully support them in their work.