New safety strategy targets bosses

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has launched a new strategy, Be Part of the Solution, which aims to to encourage companies to take responsibility for health and safety at the very top of their organisations.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions James Purnell said the strategy marked a "redoubling" of the government's efforts to bring down the number of injuries and deaths in the workplace. Last year, 229 people were killed at work in Great Britain, and the rate of decline in accidents has slowed over the past five years.

Meanwhile HSE chair Judith Hackitt announced that over £1m-worth of key health and safety publications, which can currently only be bought in printed format, would be made available free on the internet in a bid to help SMEs improve their standards.

And she warned companies to beware of neglecting their health and safety practices, and reducing expenditure of maintaining machinery, simply because of the recession.

She said: "The recession is not an excuse for not doing the right thing and doing it now."

She added that the strategy placed a new emphasis on "realism and common sense", reinforcing the principle set down in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 that those who create risk are also those best positioned to manage it.

She also indicated that there would be a new approach to health and safety training, with a focus on "soft skills" to help workers build their confidence in assessing a situation and identifying for themselves what precautions to take.

However there were few details on what the new strategy would mean in practical terms for individual industry sectors and Hackitt admitted that there had been "very few" changes to the strategy since a consultation document was published in December last year.

More details on the direction the HSE will take are expected when it publishes its business plan later this year.

Trades Union Congress (TUC) general secretary Brendan Barber welcomed the launch of the strategy:

"The strategy represents a welcome clarification of the direction the HSE now hopes to take in the period ahead," he said.

But he warned that the details what the strategy entails practically have yet to be delivered and said he looked forward to working with the HSE to developing those plans.

The HSE is now encouraging individual companies to sign up to the Be Part of the Solution strategy. It indicated that there were 22 signatories already, including Corus and BAA. No construction firms have yet signed up.