Health and Safety Risk Management Review

PRIMO: This approach and methodology of Risk Management Partners and Gallagher Basset can result in a systematic and thorough picture of the actual health and safety aspects in a public organisation. It above all gives input for concrete management measures. The processes review and implementation are well interlinked and based on practical experiences. It is a tool for proactivity.

Source: Risk Management Partners

Overview
Every working day in Great Britain at least one person is killed and over 6,000 are injured at work. Every year three-quarters of a million people take time off work because of what they regard as work-related illness. About 30 million work days are lost as a result.

Accidents and ill health are costly to workers and their families. They can also harm organisations because, in addition to the costs of personal injuries, they may incur far greater costs from damage to property or equipment, lost production, even damage to the organisation’s reputation.

With very few exceptions, employers must have liability insurance to protect against injuries to or ill-health of their employees. They must also have insurance for accidents involving vehicles and possibly, third-party and buildings insurance. However, insurance policies only cover a small proportion of the costs of accidents. Costs not covered by insurance can include:

sick pay
damage or loss of product and raw materials
repairs to plant and equipment
overtime working and temporary labour
production delays
investigation time
fines & penalties

Studies carried out by the HSE have found that uninsured costs far outweigh those covered by insurance policies, with total uninsured losses from day-to-day accidents ranging from twice up to 36 times the total paid in insurance premiums in the same year; the average being around ten times the amount paid in premiums.

Directors and managers can be held personally responsible for failures to control health and safety. With the advent of corporate manslaughter legislation, and cases such as the Legionella outbreak in Barrow-in-Furness intensifying the scrutiny of local authorities’ health and safety systems, the message is simple, organisations must manage health and safety with the same degree of expertise and commitment as other core business activities if they are to successfully control risks and prevent harm to people and damage to property and assets.

Objectives of the review
Against this background, Gallagher Bassett has developed an extensive review tool to measure and critically examine the health and safety management systems within local authorities.

The review focuses on the five key components of a successful health and safety management system, as defined by the Health and Safety Executive in their publication ‘Successful Health and Safety Management’ (HSG65). These are: