HSE's Tyneside swoop finds one in five at fault

News | HSP
21.07.2008

Poor site traffic management, untrained forklift drivers, damaged racking and lack of local exhaust ventilation were three of the problems uncovered by HSE and Newcastle City Council inspectors in a recent blitz of businesses at 12 Tyneside industrial estates, leading them to issue 14 firms with Improvement Notices and to give notice on another eight if they do not raise safety standards.

The inspectors visited 103 companies and found breaches of the Work at Height Regulations and the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations among others.

"The kind of unacceptable practise we saw included people accessing upper storage areas with no precautions in place to prevent them from falling and being injured or even killed and not properly guarding dangerous parts of machines," said HSE Inspector Michael Bone.

"The reality is that they are simply accidents waiting to happen but could be prevented by doing simple things such as storing items at ground level, or if they have to be stored at a height providing edge protection and carrying out risk assessments and making sure that all dangerous parts of a machine are recognised and guarded."

The inspectors also checked workplace transport arrangements to see if the estate landlords were at fault.

"On some industrial estates we were appalled by what we saw," said Bone. "Cars were parked on pedestrian walkways, there was no way of separating pedestrians from traffic - which can range from your typical white van to huge articulated lorries doing deliveries. It simply wasn't acceptable, especially when transport is one of the major causes of workplace accidents."