Image showing a workplace accident - a worker is shown lying on scaffolding boards with his hard hat laying to the side of him, holding his head and lying awkwardly

How confident are you that your workers understand the importance of adhering to health and safety law at all times in the workplace?

Lack of understanding can have devastating consequences for both them and their employers if they don’t?

With 98% of the adult population having a mobile phone, poor health and safety practices are always at risk of being captured on camera.

Earlier this year a building firm in Littleborough, Greater Manchester was fined for a catalogue of health and safety failings that included two builders being lifted into the air by a raised telehandler bucket.

A photograph caught the moment a pair of workers stood in the bucket of a digger to fit a stone into the top of a new home.

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspectors visited the housing development on 7 July 2021 and issued Hoyle Developments Limited, the site’s principal contractor, with a Prohibition Notice for inadequate scaffolding and Improvement Notices for a lack of welfare facilities and insecure fencing.

The company was fined £120,000 and ordered to pay £3,165.15 in costs at Manchester Magistrates’ Court on 25 January 2023.

Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, employers are required by law to protect their employees, and others, from harm. Failure to do so will result in prosecution, fines and, in some cases, jail.

And no one is exempt from prosecution. In February earlier this year, a division of Formula One motor firm McLaren was found guilty of two health and safety charges over the death of a senior engineer who fell while inspecting the brand centre’s ceiling. The firm was found guilty of failing to ensure that both employees and other people were not exposed to the risk of falling from height. McLaren Services will be sentenced at Reading Crown Court on 31 March.

There are a myriad of courses which can help employees understand the importance of health and safety in the workplace, including NLT’s Principles of Risk Assessment Level 2. This one-day course is designed to give all employees, regardless of their role in the workplace, a better understanding of health and safety issues and risk assessment.

It can be delivered to groups in your company or as an open course in one of our training centres and is very ‘hands on’.

In conjunction with training staff, it is also key that company’s sites are compliant with health and safety legislation.

In addition to providing training, NLT also offers a Health and Safety Assessment service. As part of this, one of our health and safety experts undertakes a full site inspection, assessment and method statement project.

The service was used by Chesterfield-based Love Brewing after online sales of home brew equipment quadrupled, resulting in a significant increase in stock and staff.

Busy with running the expanding business, Darren Byrne, General Manager at Love Brewing contacted NLT Training Services for support and help to undertake Health and Safety risk assessments for each storage site.

He explained “NLT had previously delivered Ladder training, Slips Trips and Falls, along with Manual Handling and had always given us a professional service so it was my first port of call to help us with our new needs – they delivered exactly what we needed.”

The full site inspection, assessment and method statement project was completed in only a few days by NLT for Love Brewing, leaving Darren free to concentrate on running the business.

If you would like any assistance in carrying out the Health and Safety risk assessments at your workplace, please contact us today to find out more about how we can help. Or, to browse our range of Health and Safety and Leadership and Management courses, please visit here, or call us on 0333 880 3540.