Cuts prompt concerns over waste health and safety

Financial constraints being faced by both the Health and Safety Executive and waste management companies could affect the potential to run the campaigns needed to continue the sector's improving health and safety record.

That is the warning from Chris Jones, the chair of the body which brings together government, industry, local authority and Health and Safety Executive (HSE) representatives to develop waste H&S initiatives, the Waste Industry Safety and Health (WISH) Forum.

Mr Jones told letsrecycle.com that the impact of government cuts on the HSE's work was a “concern”, and in particular in relation to its publicity work, such as the campaign it launched last year reminding councils to check their responsibilities when procuring and managing waste contracts (see letsrecycle.com story).

“My bigger concern would be things like the campaign on procurement which the HSE funded, and if they can't fund that, we couldn't fund it as an industry,” he said.

“WISH as a body, or the Environmental Services Association (ESA), can't. It's not something we could have organised events on, because of who the HSE are, people sit up and listen,” he added.

Mr Jones, who is also director of risk management and compliance at Cory Environmental, highlighted the fact that the majority of guidance on waste health and safety originates from WISH or the ESA, but said there were further concerns over how the economic situation could impact on company's willingness to support the forum.

“WISH doesn't have one pound to spend,” he said. “All of the contributions to WISH to date have been voluntary and I don't envisage that changing, but it will be more difficult for us because companies will be less willing to do things that can benefit the industry as a whole, so it could take longer.

“Whether or not trade associations will be willing to fund similar costs, you'll have to ask them,” he added.

Guidance

Mr Jones also noted that the HSE was reducing the amount of industry-specific guidance it produced – but claimed that this was part of an ongoing drive which had begun before any government spending cuts had an effect on the executive agency's budget.

He gave the example of machinery lock-off as an area where the ESA had suggested the HSE issue specific guidance, but, because there was “lots” of relevant guidance already from processing industries, the HSE had decided not to.

And, he contrasted this with the situation for more waste-specific areas, noting that he had met with HSE and ESA last week to discuss the agency producing specific guidance on exposure to hazardous substances when supplying landfill gases.

However, Mr Jones noted that the way guidance was produced, and the way it was disseminated were likely to change, noting that, with government looking to reduce the number of websites it runs by 70% by the end of March 2011, “the HSE have to justify every bit of guidance they put on their site”.

In light of this, he explained: “We could put forward something [or] the HSE could decide they want it to be guidance alone, they may decide it should be a piece of annex to some existing guidance or the ESA could produce it.”

He added: “It would have HSE input but whether or not it would be circulated by the HSE would be another question.”

Accident rate

Outlining the importance of the issue, Mr Jones said: “The waste industry traditionally has a high accident rate. It's coming down and the momentum needs to be maintained. We want to see the HSE maintaining an impetus.”

While the seven deaths recorded in the sector in 2009/10 was lower than the 12 to 16 usually seen annually, the first month of 2011 saw two fatalities in the industry.

These included an explosion at Sterecycle's Rotherham autoclave facility which resulted in an employee's death (see letsrecycle.com story), and a SITA collection worker being fatally injured in an incident involving a collection vehicle in Kent (see letsrecycle.com story).

But, Mr Jones claimed that the continuing decline in the number of incidents reported under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) was a more accurate measure of the progress being made.

“There's been a spate of recent fatalities, but as a measure of performance fatalities are a very crude tool. They move up and down erratically, whereas if you start to look at RIDDORs, they've been going down,” he said.