Leading insurance broker ‘Go Compare’ produced a report listing the riskiest industries to work in, taken as an average over five years up to 2020. Construction took the unwanted top spot with 17.1% of the total accident at work fatalities for the period surveyed.
Although the Go Compare report was from a few years ago, the most recent HSE Construction Statistics for 2021 back up its findings. Construction had more fatalities than any other industry for the year (39) and approximately 61,000 non-fatal injuries.
Construction is one of the biggest industries in the UK, employing 3.1 million people, almost 10% of the country’s workforce. So, the more people there are in a sector, the larger the number of accidents at work there will be, would be the argument in its defence.
And yes, building sites are fraught with danger. For instance, there are few occupations where many workers must regularly work at height, e.g. on scaffolds, roofs, partially completed buildings, etc. Falls from height account for 50% of all fatalities in the building trade.
There are counter-arguments to both points. Whilst construction may be one of the largest industries in the UK, the number of annual fatalities is still out of proportion with the number of people who work in the industry.
Working in construction is indeed fraught with potential danger, but for that very reason, it is well-regulated – on paper at least.
As well as owing their employees a common law duty of care to keep them safe at work, employers in the construction industry also have a plethora of legislation to comply with, including:
- Work at Height Regulations 2005
- PUWER (Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998
- Health and Safety at Work Act 1974
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999
- COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002
- LOLER (Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998
So again, we ask, why the construction industry has such a poor record for worker safety?
Leading personal injury solicitors, Mooneerams, give their thoughts:
- The HSE, the construction sector’s regulator, saw its funding cut by £100 million over ten years from 2009.
Then out of the blue, in 2020, the government decided that the problems caused by the Covid Pandemic called for a better-resourced safety regulator and promised more funds would be made available to the HSE.
It’s too early to say whether this sudden commitment by the government to perform a U-turn on year on year defunding of the HSE will continue now the pandemic is over.
However, ten years of cuts have already begun to take their toll, with the number of inspectors employed by the HSE drastically reduced.
Less funding brought fewer spot checks on companies to ensure they complied with their health and safety duties. In turn, HSE’s prosecutions of offending companies tailed off drastically.
Sadly, some employers will permit or turn a blind eye to shoddy work practices when they know they are less likely to be called to account.
If the funds aren’t available to facilitate regular spot check visits from HSE inspectors and increase the number of prosecutions against those found to have breached health and safety regulations, the more emboldened some employers will become about taking shortcuts.
- An article in the FT recently highlighted the acute shortage of available skilled construction workers ever since Brexit came into force. Coupled with many other foreign national workers then deciding to head to their home countries as soon as the Covid pandemic began to take hold, the industry is desperately short of the skilled workers it needs. As a result, a much-reduced construction industry workforce in the UK finds itself working longer days and more of them.
All of this leads us to consider whether the risk of serious construction accidents happening becomes more likely due to a mentally and physically exhausted workforce making critical mistakes.
- Late last year, an article in the Daily Mirror reported on a campaign to trial four-day working weeks and suggested that construction workers should be the first to try out the experiment.
The newspaper referred to a report by the Construction Industry Trading Board, warning that many builders reported suffering from sleeplessness, lack of concentration and work-related fatigue – not exactly a recipe for their or others’ safety on construction sites.
One senses that 2022 will be a big year for the Construction Industry. Will the industry remain as busy as ever?
Or will the rising price of materials and components see a levelling off of the construction boom?
Will the industry be able to fill the gap in the workforce that has developed over the past few years?
Will the HSE get the funding it needs to ensure that it can effectively perform its enforcement and regulatory work?
Answers to these questions and more will all have a part to play in finding out whether the industry keeps its unwanted title of being the most dangerous sector to work in, or whether, collectively, it decides to get its act together and brings employee safety to the fore.