Collective and Personal Fall Protection Systems

The HSE Shattered Lives campaign urges companies to make rooftop safety a priority. With falls from height still the most common cause of workplace injury and fatality in the UK, it’s important for health and safety professionals to make the right choice in safety systems. In a bid to reduce the number of tragic deaths and terrible injuries incurred from falling at height, the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has recently embarked on phase two of its ‘Shattered Lives’ campaign. Preliminary figures from the HSE reveal that workplace accidents involving a fall from height resulted in 58 people dying in 2007/08. The second phase of the campaign, launched in February 2009, aims to highlight the risks associated with slips, trips, and falls and help those involved to take simple action to prevent these unnecessary workplace accidents. According to the latest statistics from the HSE, the construction industry accounted for 59% of all deaths and 33% of all major injuries to workers as a result of falling from height last year. On top of that, more than 1,000 workers a month suffer serious injury following a slip, trip or fall at work and over 4,000 major injuries such as broken bones or fractured skulls are reported to the HSE each year by the construction industry. The campaign is designed to raise awareness of the dangers of working from height and how it can be carried out safely. In many cases, relatively simple steps can be taken to help avoid many of these falls, which yet can have devastating consequences for those involved. Better education is certainly the way forward in sharpening minds and attitudes to safety on site. To this end, we strongly urge anyone who has not yet paid a visit to the HSE Shattered Lives campaign website to do so, and make the most of the extensive range of materials and resources available – http://www.hse.gov.uk/shatteredlives/. It’s quite plain to see that the HSE campaign is having an effect. On many construction sites we visit you can see health and safety legislation tightening its grip and contractors taking their responsibilities very seriously. That said, when safety is the issue there is always room for improvement. For example, we still see many commercial and public buildings where fall protection systems are not in place. One leading construction firm knows exactly how serious the implications of ignoring these risks can be. This main contractor was fined £80,000 for pleading guilty to breaches of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 when a worker suffered serious injuries following a fall through an unmarked roof-opening of a gatehouse which was under construction. The site sub-contractor also pleaded guilty to breaching the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, failing to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment for employees working on roofs and was subsequently fined £25,000. Both firms were ordered to pay £10,000 each in costs. This type of action is a wakeup call for anyone involved in rooftop work. If working at height is unavoidable, safety representatives should urge employers to have procedures in place to prevent such falls. Those who contract others to access and maintain rooftop equipment are legally responsible for ensuring proper safety precautions are in place under the Work at Height Regulations 2005, as amended by the Work at Height (Amendment) Regulations 2007. These Regulations replaced all the earlier regulations about working at height. They consolidated previous legislation on working at height and implement European Council Directive 2001/45/EC concerning minimum safety and health requirements for the use of equipment for work at height (the Temporary Work at Height Directive). One of the key HSE recommendations is to select and use the right rooftop safety equipment. The most common protection systems available on the market can be broken down into two groups: collecti

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