RoSPA Press Office : Press Release

May 10, 2002
MORE COMMITMENT NEEDED TO HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK

Safety experts will be told at a national conference next week that greater effort is needed if tough targets to reduce the number of work-related accidents are to be met.

Sharpening the Focus on Health and Safety Performance is the theme of RoSPA’s Health and Safety at Work Congress at the NEC, Birmingham, from Monday to Thursday (May 13-16, 2002).

Roger Bibbings, Occupational Safety Adviser for The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said: “There are ambitious targets to reduce work-related injuries and ill-health by 2010. The aim is to be half way to meeting them by 2004. If that is to be achieved, action must be taken now rather than leaving things until the last minute.

“Everyone involved in business and industry – employers, trade unions, contractors, suppliers, professional organisations, insurers and safety professionals – must pull together. They need to identify barriers to improvement so that they can be removed and fill in any gaps in their safety systems. If they don’t, lives will continue to be damaged by work, and the targets will not be met.”

He said the conference was an opportunity for experts from throughout the UK to take stock of the current position and rise to the challenges ahead.

The Health and Safety Commission’s Revitalising Health and Safety strategy launched in 2000 set a 10-year target to: reduce working days lost from work-related injury and ill-health by 30 per cent; reduce the incidence of people suffering from work-related health problems by 20 per cent; and reduce the number of fatal and major injuries by 10 per cent.

In the UK there are 1.6 million workplace injuries every year as well as 2.2 million cases of ill-health caused or made worse by work, costing business £6.5 billion annually.

The four-day RoSPA conference, in association with ScottishPower, will be opened by Dr Alan Whitehead, the Health and Safety Minister at the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions.

Leading figures in the UK’s health and safety system will be presenting the latest thinking on: the Revitalising Health and Safety initiative, new approaches to accident prevention, the occupational health challenge and the delivery of competent health and safety advice.