Figures from the HSE show the number of scots killed at work has risen more than 40%.

This stat is from the HSE who have cut back on site visits & then want to charge company's when they do visit(find a hazard).

I believe the figures will rise as Employers now feel the HSE is less of a Threat, less visits, less improvement notices, less prohibition notices, less company's, directors taken to court.

Let me know your thoughts

I hope I'm. Wrong & 2013 no person is injured whilst at work.

MrH&S

Allow me to cringe slightly.
Employers have never been scared of a visit by the HSE. Even in the "good" old days when they visited the interval between visits was measured in decades, not years.
Many companies started, operated, and closed, never having received a visit.
The HSE is the industrial equivalent of the childrens boogie monster.
And just as real a threat.
In these times of job insecurity even anonymous tip-offs are drying-up....having a dangerous job is better than being safely unemployed.
Blacklists: You know they make sense !
Oh, and read the rules about non-iosh surveys...

(no rules were broken in the making of this comment. Maybe a few were bent slightly but it's hard to know because I never learnt to read between lines)

In the absence of a suitable reference to these data it is difficult to comment in detail. However, the most likely circumstance is of a complete misinterpretation of the data based on inadequate reasoning and search for a headline grabbing statement.

Early in the year, I did a review of HSE mortality data for the waste industries. My interest was in biological risks though predictably virtually all of the fatalities in this sector were bodies in bins and vehicle-related incidents.

Notwithstanding, HSE data showed a sharp year-on-year increase and the response from several editors and many of those in the industry was of shock and horror, emboldened by meaningless carping about the failures of politicians and regulators for not saving the industry from itself.

An overview of the 5 and 10 year mortality stats painted a different picture. The trend was steeply and consistently downward, the waste sector having worked hard to reduce mortality to a rate where even 1 or 2 either way can be interpreted as a huge percentage rise or fall while in reality this is insignificant and should not be interpreted as such. Each death is regrettable and everything done to prevent recurrence, but if the data are misinterpreted at the outset few meaningful advances can be planned and properly implemented.

As inferred above, other organisations involved in H&S are more effective than the HSE.
Insurance companies mainly.
Let's face it, a regulatory organisation that cannot enforce the regulation is of less use than a legless horse.

How many more are going to make unsubstantiated and unrealistic comments based on a SINGLE observation, namely fatalities in one calendar year only?

The 'evidence' provided is nothing more than an incomplete news report. Where is the data? What is the trend?

This foolhardy carping about a "high" accident rate this year may well be as hollow and meaningless as the self-congratulatory claims that "we saved lives" when next year the figure happens to be lower.

Does anyone care to look at the data?

Thank you John.

And what a surprise. Looking at the morbidity (slide 8) and mortality (slide 7) data from 1997/8, the persistently downward trend is plain to see.

see #5

When will people stop jumping to [entirely wrong] conclusions and making such ridiculous accusations about press and politicians, and anyone else who might come to mind, without first checking a few simple facts?

Sorry_the link doesn't seem to work.

How on earth can you hope to improve or qualify incorrect assumptions drawn from misunderstanding of these data by offering a few links to pieces in the local newspapers?

It simply doesn't compute, as exemplified in your suggestion of a downward trend IN the year 97/98 when it is plain to see a downward trend FROM 97/98 that continues until the 2012 data set.

After many years of decline it does appear as if fatalities at work have plateaued. Indeed, we may even see a slight increase in years ahead due to diluted regulatory interventions, general apathy promulgated by this government and possibly other beguiling aspects such as the recession. It could be part of a wider issue where society is willing to accept an inevitable rate of occupational ill health and injuries, just as society appear tolerant to road deaths which are about 10 times that of workplace fatalities.

"Professional commitment to promoting understanding and respect, as at present, calls for much better use of research in social sciences to persuade influential social figures in editorial and political roles to raise their thinking welll beyond the double-bind situations sketched by Bob and Ray"

Yeah: That'll happen.

Raise their thinking beyond money would be better..

The historical perspective is certainly important, yet it also puts phases of change in context. Yet, curiously, the emphasis on developments since 1974 generally overlooks the progress in the UK in relation to the design of safety/health at work between 1945, when major industries - in particular coalmining, employing 750,000 then - and 1972, when the Robens Committee was set up.

The Safety Drama Triangle - with corners at 'Market Forces', 'Organisational Citizenship' and 'Personal Discretion - encourages constructive overviews, relegating fruitless dogmatic bias in favour of balanced and informed decisionmaking.

You asked for our thoughts.
You got them.
As for the hse, they've always been of little use, they just charge for being so now.
Let's have the stats about the accidents, or is that a bit much ?

Please follow any of the links above with regards to stats more people killed in Scotland than the previous year

MrH&S

Mr H&S.
I think the issue for me with your topic is that you have chosen to select one piece of data from a comprehensive report. You then use this to support your opinion that changes to the enforcement regime are ill founded and the outcome will inevitably be negative.

Anyone reading the report, which John Murray so kindly referenced for us, will find plenty of indications of improving trends. Of course any fatality in the workplace is unacceptable and we all, politicians, enforcers, employers, employees et al, have to do more to reduce that number. However, we simply should not use one year’s result to define a policy or plan.

Whether we like it or not we live in times where Burkian conservatism will always thrive and prosper. Amongst other things that means expanding personal freedoms and reducing government. There has been plenty of negative prediction on this forum about the way the HSE is being required to change. I don't agree with much of it.
We cannot know at the moment whether the changes will result in a negative, positive or neutral outcome. We may fear the negative potential but we cannot predict it.

One small example. Why will F.F.I. be so catastrophic? It could very well have a far more positive effect than the present system where the penalty for a ‘material breach’ may not be applied for a long time after the offence is committed. I suggest that the proximity of a direct financial penalty to the discovery of the breach will focus far more minds than anything the HSE could have achieved in the present system. After all, it does not prevent the HSE from continuing with the education aspect of prevention despite the opinions voiced here and elsewhere to the contrary.

P48