Focus on health and safety: construction industry statistics

"Roofer dies in fall". No fanfare, no outrage, just another matter-of-fact headline from a local newspaper describing a death in the construction industry.

Beneath the headline, of course, is the story of the human tragedy involved. "A roofer has died after falling 25 feet off scaffolding on Folders Keep building site in Burgess Hill, West Sussex", said the report in the Mid-Sussex Times at the end of last month. "Martin Livingstone fell while working on the new development on Monday at around 8am. He was treated by an on-site first aider and two paramedic crews arrived soon after.

"The Sussex Air Ambulance and Sussex Police helicopter arrived at the scene and he was then airlifted to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, where he was treated for serious head and chest injuries. Mr Livingstone from Bexhill-On-Sea was employed by a roofing sub contractor to work for developers Crest Nicholson at the site."

If the cold reality of Mr Livingstone's death is not unsettling enough, the human consequences of his accident were further brought home when the paper reported that one of his relatives was also working at the site.

The wider tragedy, however, is that this same story, or something very similar, is reported in local newspapers across the country at an average rate in the past year of more than one per week. The national press, of course, only pays attention for much higher profile incidents or multiple deaths - tower cranes would be a case in point. The drip-drip-drip of one death here, another death there, however, seems not to register.

Yet, taken collectively, the fatality figures for the construction industry constitute a total number of deaths that even the most hard-bitten of Fleet Street hacks would find difficult to ignore. Last year, 77 people lost their lives working in construction. If this appalling figure on its own is not enough, last year also saw an increase of 28% over the previous year, making 2006/2007 the most lethal year in construction for five years.

Output growth

According to the HSE, the reason for this growth is simple. "This can be explained by the substantial increase in housebuilding work in recent years," it said in a statement. "The output measured in £bn has more than doubled over the last few years and this, together with a similar rise in the workforce engaged in this work, has unfortunately given rise to an increase in fatalities in both housebuilding and refurbishment/repair work on domestic premises.

For 2006/2007, fatalities to workers in housebuilding were 15 (compared with 7 in 2005/06) and for domestic refurbishment/repair work were 22 (compared to 12 in 2005/2006). These increases account for the general rise in fatal accidents to workers in construction between 2005/2006 and 2006/2007, which was from 60 to 77."

Although it's far from clear that any particular sector in the construction industry grew by 28% in 2006/2007, pointing out that the rate of fatal accidents hasn't increased disproportionately to the rate of growth of the whole industry may be good news - except for the 17 extra individuals killed in 2007 as the industry's grim mortality rate kept pace with its expansion. Not surprisingly, there are those who feel that this does not go far enough (the HSE was invited to expand on this explanation and to outline how it intends to respond to such alarming figures but, in spite of repeated requests, was unavailable for comment).

The role of the growing industry in the increased number of fatalities is acknowledged by Barckley Sumner, press officer at industry trade union UCATT: "Yes, it's a growing industry, there's increased pressure of work, a desire to get jobs finished and there's been an influx of new workers with less training."

But he also suggests there are other, underlying reasons that also need to be tackled, such as the trend to a casual and fragmented workforce. "Bogus self-employment is a major cause of concern when it comes to health and safety. It affects the culture on a site - there may be no safety reps - and the safety imperative just isn't there if the company doesn't know its workforce. We need to resolve this once and for all. You can still walk onto a site, give your name and address and start work that day. That's still an all-too regular occurrence."

Another increasingly regular phenomenon is the use of gangmasters to provide labour. "The Gangmaster Licensing Act only applies to agriculture, food processing and shellfish collection," Sumner explains. "Those who couldn't or didn't want to get a licence have moved into construction."

Migrant workers

This growth has in turn been fuelled by the increase in migrant workers for whom access to the industry often comes through the medium of employment agencies and, now, gangmasters. What's more, the proliferation of migrant workers can in itself cause new health and safety concerns including a lack of training, a problem that is exacerbated by language difficulties and the fact that, according to Sumner, they are often employed in the riskiest jobs as well.

The scale of the problem is clear, with anecdotal evidence from recruitment agencies indicating they'd be stuck without migrant workers. This is borne out by UCATT's own figures: 41.9% of those working on construction sites in London are migrant workers.

Then there's the ongoing issue of management responsibility. "Directors duties must be made statutory," says Sumner. "The voluntary code has been a failure. The biggest step change there can be in the industry is if directors realise that if they break health and safety rules then they'll go to prison. They get sent to prison already for fiddling a few figures, they need to know the same will happen with health and safety breaches."

Of course, this presupposes sufficient resources to be able to enforce any legislation to this effect. The DWP has recently announced that over the next three years the HSE will receive up to £721m. This compares to £714m in the previous three-year period, although the apparent £7m increase in funding over the total period becomes a decrease in real terms of around £8m if inflation is taken into account.

In a recent interview Judith Hackitt, chair of the Health and Safety Commission, said resources and the number of inspectors was not the key issue, but Sumner disagrees. "We have an ideological problem with Judith Hackitt's comments that it's up to the industry to resolve its problems. It seems strange that we're asking for more resources and the HSE disagrees. Concentrated blitzes are fine, but they're not the be-all-and-end-all. You need to have regular inspections as well. Bosses need to know there could be an inspector just around the corner, especially given the HSE itself says management failure plays a part in 70% of serious accidents."

Resources are also an issue. "There's only a 33% chance of prosecution in a fatal accident, but there's a 90% conviction rate," Sumner points out. "The HSE needs more resources."

More resources and fewer talking shops, as last year's safety forum has been described, is the implication. "There has been some progress but it has been slow.

"Fundamentally, we don't believe the industry will reform itself until it's made to," Sumner adds.

Certainly, the figures for this year so far are scarcely more encouraging. According to the latest statistics available from the HSE, the first half of 2007/2008, covering the six months until the end of September last year, saw 34 deaths in construction. UCATT's Sumner says the most recent figure he could uncover was 52 fatalities by mid-January - Mr Livingstone's unfortunate accident takes this tally to at least 53. "With two-and-a-half months still to go it doesn't look good," he says, before adding that March 2007 was "horrific" as work picked up after the traditional winter lull, with some companies wanting to get jobs done and others spending more money to use up budgets before the end of the financial year.

These figures should be treated with some caution, however, at least according to the HSE. It would neither confirm nor deny the current running total, saying instead that it had decided only to release validated figures on a quarterly basis. Even so, figures for the third quarter, which ended on December 31st 2007, remained unpublished at the time of writing.

The fact that these latest figure are now, by the time you read this, more than five months out of date, is in itself a source of concern.

"You can't improve health and safety by putting a PR hoarding around health and safety statistics," says Sumner.

Maybe it's a case of any publicity, even bad publicity, being a good thing in the long run for those who work - and sometimes die - in construction.

A health and safety professional writes

Olav Lawrence, group health, safety and environment manager at Dean and Dyball, draws attention to the widespread use of unsafe working practices still seen in the construction industry:

It is depressing that with so much effort going into accident prevention we have had an increase in the number of fatalities in the last year.

How many of us witness construction workers carrying on their work in a dangerous manner?

This weekend a local corner shop was having new windows fitted to the flat above.

The installation team of two were working on a staging board linked between two tower scaffolds with no guardrail to prevent them from falling: 30% of fatalities are the result of falls from height.

On top of this they were handling a large sheet of glass with no barrier below: 21% of the fatalities were due to being struck by falling or moving objects. Similar activities occur throughout the nation.

Probably, right now, someone somewhere is quite happily putting themselves, or worse their employees or the public, at serious risk.

On most of the large construction sites things are better controlled by training, supervision and the support of expert safety advice.

Consequently the risk of serious injury would seem less likely.

But clearly there is still a lot that can be done and, shamefully, at a very basic level.