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Health and Safety

If you’re an employer, manager or supervisor, your responsibilities include:

• Ensuring, so far as reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of employees.
• Displaying an Employer’s Liability Compulsory Insurance Certificate.
• Having a general statement of health and safety policy.
• Carrying out risk assessments of your work activities and recording the significant findings, if you have five or more employees.
• Implementing any control measures identified by your risk assessment.
• Appointing a competent person to assist the company with health and safety requirements, where necessary

If you’re an employee, your responsibilities include:

• Co-operating with your employer and following any information, instructions and training that are given to you.
• Taking reasonable care at all times and making sure that you do not endanger yourself or anyone else.
• Only operating the plant and equipment you have been trained and authorised to use and using all tools and equipment safely in accordance with instructions given or training received.
• Reporting any defects or potential hazards in equipment to your supervisor as soon as possible.
• Using the personal protective equipment supplied by your employer correctly, taking care of it and reporting any loss or defects in the equipment.
• Reporting to your employer any work situation that might present any danger.

Contacts

G A Eagle, Training and Development Manager, Health and Safety - 01485 577475
D R Mason, Principal Training Adviser, Health and Safety Development - 01485 577486

Eliminate the hazard and you can forget about the risk forever!

CITB seeks to improve awareness of health and safety issues in the construction industry. A lot of accidents are preventable by training. No one is accident prone, they just haven’t been trained correctly, or perhaps they are the wrong person, doing the wrong thing, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Health and safety training can prevent this. There are three essentials for health and safety: safe people, safe places and safe systems of work.

UCATT

The most important health and safety law for UCATT workers is the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. It specifies the general duty placed on employees, occupiers of the buildings, manufacturers, employees and the self-employed. Employers have a duty to protect the general public as well as workers.

UCATT safety reps in particular and all building workers in general need to become familiar with two new Regulations which update and modernise construction safety law. The new Regulations will be the main sets of Regulations for the construction industry, and will provide much of the detail regarding safety on sites. They are:

The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994 (CDM)
The Construction (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1996 (CHSW)

CHSW sets new minimum standards in construction and replaces three sets of old Regulations:

Construction (Working Places) Regulations 1966
Construction (Health and Welfare) Regulations 1966
Construction (Health and Welfare) (Amendment) Regulations 1974.

It also replaces substantial parts of the Construction (General Provisions) Regulations 1961 (Factories Act 1961)

Other Regulations which are important are:

Safety Representatives and Safety Committee Regulations 1977
Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) 1994
Head Protection Regulations 1989
Noise at Work Regulations 1989
Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (MHSW) 1992
Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992
Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations (PPEW) 1992
Electricity at Work Regulations 1989
Confined Spaces Regulations 1997