DESIGNERS TO DEMONSTRATE RISK REDUCTION OF FALLS FROM HEIGHT IN CONSTRUCTION

HSE press release E039:03 -14 March 2003

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspectors are to meet designers and planning supervisors in Scotland and across the north of England next week, in a bid to reduce the number of accidents in the construction industry involving falls from height.

HSE Construction Inspector Nic Rigby said: "Work at height continues to be the most significant cause of fatal accidents on construction sites in the UK. Since the Construction (Design & Management) Regulations were introduced in 1994, designers have had legal duties to design risk out where reasonably practicable.

"Some designers have invested considerable resource and innovation in this area, but unfortunately many others have simply failed to address this area of their work, sometimes with fatal consequences for those on site."

In order to improve the situation, HSE's construction inspectors in the Scotland and Northern England have scheduled over 130 appointments throughout next week with designers and planning supervisors to talk about the way that design issues impinge on site safety - particularly working at height - and on the subsequent safety of maintenance workers during the life of the structure.

Planning supervisors and designers will be given the opportunity to demonstrate what they have done during the design stage to reduce the risk from work at height for those working on these sites. HSE inspectors will be looking for examples where innovative solutions have been used by designers to address work at height problems, in the hope that these can be shared with the wider design sector.

Putting the problem in context, Nic Rigby added: "In the past five years 437 people have been killed on construction sites in the UK, of whom 225 were killed as a result of a fall from height - that's nearly one person every week on average."

Notes to editors

1. HSE Inspectors will be visiting designers on site and in offices in Manchester, Preston, Carlisle, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and Scotland in the week commencing 17 March 2003.

2. Regulation 13 of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994 requires that designers prepare designs to avoid foreseeable risks to any person working on or cleaning a structure or who may be affected by the work, and to combat such risks at the source.

3. The construction industry set the following targets for improvement. To reduce:

• the incidence rate of fatalities and major injuries by 40% by 2004/5 and 66% by 2009/10;
• the incidence rate of cases of work-related ill health by 20% by 2004/5 and 50% by 2009/10; and
• the number of working days lost from work-related injury and ill health by 20% by 2004/5 and by 50% by 2009/10.

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