Construction remains the most dangerous industry in the UK, with signficiant numbers of injuries every year. This is undisputable, and we need continuing action to ensure real improvements.

But Joe, you fail to mention the significant reduction in deaths and injuries which we've seen over recent years in response to new legislation and initiatives - to choose an easy example, the reduction in falls from heights. Likewise the CDM regulations began a process of moving responsibility up the ladder (ahem) to the design team and commissioning clients.

Despite Architect’s bleating, Joe’s article gets it about right (some of the stats might be a bit out) but there’s much more to worry about than in his piece. To see what’s really going on and how worried you should be look at:

Come clean -  http://www.hazards.org/commissionimpossible/comeclean.htm

Total suck up -  http://www.hazards.org/totalsuckup/index.htm

That’s not a bad start.

To answer Architect’s complaint - while there has been a slow and steady down turn in the number of people killed at work there has also been a move away from the industries that kill - mining, manufacturing etc. So it’s not because employers are being nicer to us or that new laws have been more effective. Architect’s comment about the fatal and incident rate going down, well that’s not true either if you go to the Hazards article "Come clean" you’ll see it’s actually going up. This is even more worrying as we drift away from the so called "dangerous" industries, this rate should be going down not up.

Another factor not taken into account is the twenty years of campaigning by the Construction Safety Campaign (CSC) who have been key in calling for negligent employers who kill workers to go to jail. They have been well backed by campaigns such as the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign www.simonjones.org.uk who did such a fantastic job of campaigning after Simon was killed on his first day at work. If it was not for their hard work over the years the debate on corporate killing would not be so well developed and employers would not be as concerned as they currently are about keeping themselves out of jail - despite the rubbish proposals the government have recently put out.

If you want balance - Our safety police, the HSE (a very conservative organisation), say the cost of occupational incidents, ill-health, injuries, disablement and death to the UK is between £18 - £30 billion every year and that the greater majority of this could be prevented if employers followed the spirit of our laws. While new laws have had some effect it is clearly not enough. Our enforcement agency is under resourced and it’s going to get worse with the current massive cuts agenda, and their enforcement policy has been undermined in this de-regulated world. While the courts have given major fines in a few cases there are still fines of under £10k given out on employers who kill workers. The number of employers who have been imprisoned for killing a worker can still be counted on two hands (just about). So it’s a bit one sided really.

Not much to cheer about there is there. Yes it is great that the number of construction workers killed in incidents has reduced but at the same time the number that are dying from incurable asbestos related diseases is rocketing.

Lanky Mick

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