Partners in Progress
Occupational Safety: Current Activities
by Roger Bibbings, Occupational Safety Adviser, RoSPA
MORR - Managing Occupational Road Risk
DASH - Director Action on Safety and Health
Management Health & Safety Training
Health and safety in small firms
'Scottish Higher Performers' Charter
Re-launch of the H&S Groups Movement
PAKS - Preventing Accidents through Knowledge Sharing
MORR - Managing Occupational Road Risk
www.morr.org.uk
In response to an intervention by Baroness Gibson in the House of Lords debate on health and safety on 26th January, Lord Hunt, DWP Minister of State (Lords) with responsibility for HSC/E, made a commitment to take a number of steps to focus on occupational road safety (although he did suggest progress might be slow). In particular he said that the HSE would approach RoSPA to help generate some form of management standard. A document setting out 24 reasons why HSE should make MORR a higher priority is accessible at www etc. RoSPA is presently preparing a MORR standard for TfL as part of their London freight strategy.
Director Action on Safety and Health and GoPOP - 'Going Public on Performance'
www.gopop.org.uk
A further workshop was held at RoSPA on the 29th March, chaired by Professor Frank B. Wright, to look at progress and further options on disseminating corporate performance information via the web. A presentation was made by Howard Fidderman, editor of the H&S Bulletin, who has come on board to work on this project. I am continuing to talk to Frank about what steps responsibilities of directors (INDG 343). Frank's peer review (
PDF format)
A report on the workshop will be circulated shortly.
www.rospa.com/occupationalsafety/learning
We are following up with Dr John Kingston the work he has already done via NRI on the 'Definition of Operational Readiness to Investigate' initiative . John is keen that we switch the emphasis to 'ready to learn and improve'. He also suggests that we might investigation the 34 readiness points to DORI by applying them to investigation of occupational road accidents. We are discussing this internally.
Management Health & Safety Training
We will be reviewing plans for pursuing this issue at the next meeting of RoSPA's National Occupational Safety and Health Committee (NOSHC) on 29th June.
Health and safety in small firms
NOSHC are undertaking an enquiry into a wide range of activities currently in place which are designed to promote and support effective health and safety management in small firms. Over fifteen generic initiatives have been identified so far. The aim will be to assess and share good practice, review common problems and barriers and promote closer working between all the key players on the small firms health and safety scene.
NOSHC has also considered plans for the launch of a major national debate on using the workplace as a platform for promoting safety of employees and their families etc. outside work. (At lease three times as many days are lost due to accidents outside the workplace as are lost in accidents occurring in working time). RoSPA believes there is massive scope for workplace knowledge and skills transfer into accident prevention outside work with consequent business and social cost savings. We were able to feed this concept into the recent Government high-level stakeholder summit on health and well-being of people of working age held on 3rd May.
The winners of the 2006 Sir George Earle Trophy were NBC Devonport. This is the 50th anniversary year and we have had a really impressive event at the NEC on 10th and 11th May. Nina Wrightson as chair of NOSHC and the Awards Panel will be leading a review of the awards process in June to feed back lessons learned for 2007.
' Scottish Higher Performers' Charter
www.rospa.com/occupationalsafety/scottish
There was a further meeting of the SHPF at the offices of the Scottish Executive in Edinburgh on the 3rd March. We are continuing to seek out contacts in Scotland who could be persuaded to sign up to this initiative which is aimed at getting 'higher performers' to spread their H&S influence outside their organisations. We are asking them to visit the website and contact RoSPA.
Re-launch of the H&S Groups movement under the banner 'Safety Groups UK'
www.safetygroupsuk.org.uk
The re-launch of the Groups movement was a great success. HSE have provided £33k support to engage a consultant, David Bryant, who is carrying out research to support the re-launch. The Management Committee, led by Kerry Ross, is keen to discuss offers of support for elements in their work programme. RoSPA is asking its members and contacts to publicise the Groups re-launch and to encourage their contractors and suppliers to join their local Group if they are not members already.
Preventing Accident through Knowledge Sharing (PAKS)
After thinking about the discussion which followed Andrew Crowley's (Steel Construction Institute) presentation on 29th March we feel the best way forward now is to simply make the SADIE service on the Stepchangeinsafety website available to RoSPA members via our site, promote it and seek feedback which we can then evaluate. I am talking to Andrew and colleagues about this but no date has yet been set for a launch.
A PIP Forum was held at RoSPA on 17th January. It provided us with a number of useful insights on ways forward with particular projects. We are continuing to urge all those award winners and higher performers that are not yet signed up to 'Partners in Progress', to consider becoming a partner. We are very keen to secure continuing financial and other forms of support from RoSPA members for our policy development and influencing work in OH&S and, of course we are also keen to give such support full acknowledgement in our Annual Review and other publicity.
I have been invited to join a DCA Committee on risk and affordable insurance which is looking at risk aversion and the compensation culture. Geoffrey Podger, the new CE of HSE visited RoSPA on 12th May. We are preparing a major input into the HSE consultation on workforce involvement.
|
RoSPA is a registered charity: Registered Charity No: 207823 Patron: Her Majesty the Queen RoSPA Head Office: Edgbaston Park, 353 Bristol Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B5 7ST, UK |
 |