RoSPA Press Office : Press Release
August 15, 2001
MAKING SAFETY PAY IN SCOTLAND
Ways to make Scottish businesses and organisations safer places to work will be explored at a conference organised by The Royal Society for the Prevention of accidents next month.
Last year in Scotland 36 people died in work-related accidents and more than 2,700 suffered a major injury. With health problems caused or made worse by work accounting for 2.2 million working days lost each year, the total the bill is said to run to half a billion pounds.
The RoSPA congress, in association with ScottishPower, is entitled A New Vision for Scottish Health and Safety and will be held at the Thistle Hotel, Glasgow, September 5 and 6.
It will look at ways to revitalise health and safety with particular reference to Scotland. There will be special sessions on key sectors such as the construction industry, the National Health Service in Scotland, forestry and call centres. Other topics include reducing slips, trips and falls and back injury, preventing at-work road accidents and managing asbestos in buildings.
Dr Allan Sefton, Health and Safety Executive Director for Scotland, will take the chair on the first day, and the keynote address will be given by Charles Miller Smith, Chairman, ScottishPower.
Speakers will include: Stewart Campbell, Head of Health Unit, HSE Scotland; Phil Taylor, senior lecturer, Department of Management and Organisation, University of Stirling; and Miriam O’Connor, Programme Manager, Workplace, Health Education Board for Scotland, Edinburgh.
Roger Bibbings, RoSPA Occupational Safety Adviser, said: “We will be emphasising the need to make higher standards of health and safety performance a key business objective. Directors will have to start taking a greater lead in setting corporate health and safety targets and tracking progress towards them.
“Scotland can demonstrate that plans to revitalise health and safety in the workplace can be made a reality by creating real partnerships to bring the accident figures down.
“Health and safety must be a boardroom issue, but the whole workforce has to be involved. Challenging targets have to be set and we need to focus on priority issues and sectors.”
