Summit to say about health and safety?

But do these summits do any good?

At the first one, called by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, industry signed up to three targets:

• Reduce incidence rate of fatalities and major injuries by 40% by 2004/5 and 66% by 2009/10;
• Reduce incidence rate of cases of work-related ill health by 20% by 2004/5 and 50% by 2009/10;
• Reduce number of working days lost from work-related injury and ill health by 20% by 2004/5 and by 50% by 2009/10.

So how have we done? Well although construction managed to kill more people than any other industry in 2003/04, if you look at the number of people killed per 100,000 workers, it’s down 41%. Major injuries too are down, although only by 12%. Cases of work-related ill-health however remain constant and it’s difficult to tell what’s going on with working days lost due to the difficulty in gathering and compiling statistics.

According to the HSE, areas for attention at this month’s event are:

• Behavioural change and worker engagement
• Occupational health and rehabilitation
• Design
• Corporate competence
• Individual competence
• Integrated working
• Verifying performance through benchmarking
• Sharing best practice

Phew! That’s quite a list.

The big news is that Prescott, although invited to the industry-convened summit, won’t be attending. There’s nothing off about this, said an HSE spokesperson, because since the last event HSE has switched government departments. It now comes under the Department of Work and Pensions from which health and safety minister Jayne Kennedy is expected. Construction minister Nigel Griffiths will attend also.