To receive a presentation from Mr. Colin Alborough, Environmental Health Officer on activities and emerging issues in the Borough.
Minutes:
The Chairman welcomed Mr. Colin Alborough, Environmental Health Manager, who attended the meeting to report on activities and emerging issues relating to health and safety regulation and business support in the Borough.
The Panel received a presentation, which included changes within the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), where the Government had announced that 84% of health and safety regulations had been scrapped or improved in recent years. The HSE had rationalised and simplified the advice to businesses, making the HSE’s website easier to navigate and making it clearer for users to determine what needed to be done to achieve health and safety standards. Even though the HSE now directed the work that local authorities were required to do, the new National Code gave greater flexibility to allow officers to target local priorities.
It was reported that health and safety ill health incidents in Rushmoor, cost the local economy between £22.1 - £33.9 million per year and between £7.1 - £12.9 million per annum for the cost of accidents.
Locally the service supported local businesses and residents and regulated their health and safety needs. This was achieved through a number of measures including interventions with duty holders identified as poor performers; the licensing and registration of tattooist and skin piercers; and leading on a number of groups, including Safety Advisory Groups, Health & Safety Executive / Local Authorities Enforcement Liaison Committee (HELA) and the Farnborough Airshow Safety Advisory Group (SAG). The service also led on Corporate Health and Safety matters within the Council.
It was noted that the service carried out both proactive and reactive work. Proactive areas locally included targeted intervention, inspections of poor performers and project specific work, such as the Retail Violence initiative, which had highlighted that 95% of local employees had been subjected to violence at work and a number of workplaces in the Borough had no policy in place to deal with violence in the workplace. As a result of the initiative, 75% of the businesses targeted had committed to making changes to reduce risk in their workplaces. The reactive work locally involved licensing, asbestos, gas and CO safety, service requests and accidents and incidents.
Mr. Alborough advised that the service had commercialised some areas of their work through selling support packages to local business, training internal and external local authority staff and initiating full cost recovery, as a Primary Authority, for the Army and Consol, a national sunbed company. The aim would be to continue to develop the commercial offer to serve purpose and to provide income for the Council going forward.
The Panel discussed the role of the HSE relating to construction sites and other areas, which fell to the HSE for enforcement, and how more responsibility could be given to local authorities to address matters locally, quicker, through flexible warrants. It was advised that the HSE had pulled flexible warrants recently and officers were lobbying to address this issue.
In response to a query around how health and safety matters were articulated to home workers and freelancers, it was noted that statistics indicated that the risk in these areas had been low. However, advice was available to anyone who requested it.
The Panel NOTED the presentation and thanked Mr. Alborough.