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The HSE has produced guidance to help industry during this period which can be found here and includes:

• Maintaining thorough examination and testing schemes
• HSE’s enforcement approach during the period of the outbreak

The law for Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations (LOLER) and Pressure Systems Safety Regulations (PSSR) remain in place and businesses must continue to ensure that equipment is safe to use.

If duty holders, having worked with their inspection body, are unable to arrange a periodic inspection within the specified time period, they must take competent advice (e.g. from their inspection body) and apply a robust, risk based approach to decision-making about the continued operation of plant and machinery outside of the statutory regime, ensuring that the decision making process is documented.

Considerations may include:

• Assessing which plant and equipment require statutory inspections and examinations and when these are due.
• Make an assessment to determine if any plant or equipment is essential for safety or operation of the premises – if plant or equipment is not required, it could be taken out of use.
• Liaise with the relevant contractors who carry out statutory inspections and examinations to deter­mine what level of service they can provide (for hospitals, care homes or infrastructure essential to the running of the country, it would be prudent to draw your contractors attention to this).
• Review with the relevant Competent Person whether lifting equipment can be examined against a written scheme of examination to allow more leeway than the normal six- or 12-month frequency.
• Have the relevant Competent Person review the written scheme of examination for pressure vessels to see if any scheduled examinations can be extended.
• Inform your insurance company of statutory inspections and examinations or maintenance and testing of plant and equipment, which will not be undertaken.
• Carry out pre-use inspections of plant and equipment.
• Carry out visual inspections of portable appliances.

Each year, the Health and Safety Executive releases its annual tally of fatal injuries sustained in British workplaces, providing vital data and guidance to help employers reduce the risks in their own workplaces. This year has seen a number of notable trends occurring with the figures, which have likely been at least partially influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s a very detailed report, so we’ve summed up some of its key findings below. (Unsurprisingly, it still heavily underlines the importance of working safely at height.)

What are the key findings of the report?

There were 111 people killed in the workplace in 2019/20, according to data collected through RIDDOR. Notably, this marks a drop in 38 fatal injuries from the previous year, and in fact it’s the lowest annual number on record. Since 2015/16, the annual average over the last few years has been 137, so 111 is quite a significant decrease.

The HSE has taken care to note that these statistics can be prone to year-on-year fluctuations, so some variance is to be expected. It’s likely that the Covid-19 pandemic influenced the figures to at least some degree, although it’s difficult to measure the extent of its effect. The HSE has said that partially due to both these factors, the drop in figures might not necessarily be indicative of any dramatic change in overall workplace safety across the UK.

Most industries have recorded a lower death toll than average over the past few years. The exceptions are the construction sector, and administration and support services, both of which have slightly exceeded their average.

Across all industries, the statistics noted:

• 40 deaths in construction (recent annual average: 37)
• 20 deaths in agriculture, forestry and fishing (recent annual average: 27)
• 15 deaths in manufacturing (recent annual average: 20)
• 11 deaths in transportation and storage (recent annual average: 14)
• 6 deaths in wholesale, retail, motor repair, hospitality (recent annual average: 9)
• 5 deaths in waste and recycling (recent annual average: 9)
• 6 deaths in administrative and support services (recent annual average: 4)

Notable sector trends

As you can see from the figures above, construction remains the UK’s deadliest sector (accounting for nearly a third of workplace deaths) with agriculture, forestry and fishing following closely behind, itself accounting for 20% of worker deaths.

The death rate in the manufacturing sector is towards the lower end of its average established over the last few years, but hasn’t hit record-breaking lows just yet. At the moment, it’s about the same level as it was in 2017/18. Meanwhile, the transportation and storage sector accounts for about 10% of all workplace fatal injuries.

Although agriculture, forestry and fishing recorded the lowest number of fatal injuries this year, there’s also another way of looking at the data, which is to examine the fatal injury rate in terms of the number of fatalities per 100,000 workers employed. In these terms, the year-on-year trends from HSE show that agriculture continues to be one of the sectors with the worst fatal injury rate (alongside waste and recycling). Together, they both have a fatal injury rate about 18 times as high as the average across other industries.

Details of when and how you should report coronavirus incidents under RIDDOR (the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013) are detailed below:

You must only make a report under RIDDOR, relating to coronavirus, when:

• an unintended incident at work has led to someone’s possible or actual exposure to coronavirus. This must be reported as a dangerous occurrence

• a worker has been diagnosed as having COVID-19 and there is reasonable evidence that it was caused by exposure at work. This must be reported as a case of disease

• a worker dies as a result of occupational exposure to coronavirus.

Visit the HSE website for further details on the above, along with examples.