What's Common Sense?

1. Common SenseNic Carstens, Occupational Health & Safety Manager&Kim Hicks, Senior Health & Safety Advisor

3. What's Common Sense? • Common sense is defined by Webster’s as, "sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.“ • The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as, "the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way". • What do you think…

4. What we will cover today…. • Lord Young Review • lofstedt review • Working for a Healthier Tomorrow

5. Key issues… your thoughts..

6. Lord Young Report

7. Compensation culture • Introduce a simplified claims procedure for personal injury claims • Examine the option of extending the upper limit for road traffic accident personal injury claims to £25,000. • Restrict the operation of referral agencies and personal injury lawyers and control the volume and type of advertising. • Clarify (through legislation if necessary) that people will not be held liable for any consequences due to well-intentioned voluntary acts on their part.

8. Low hazard workplaces • Simplify the risk assessment procedure for low hazard workplaces such as offices, classrooms and • The HSE should create periodic checklists that enable businesses operating in low hazard environments to check and record their compliance with regulations as well as online video demonstrations of best practice in form completion. • Exempt employers from risk assessments for employees working from home in a low hazard environment. • Exempt self-employed people in low hazard businesses from risk assessments.

9. Raising standards • Professionalise health and safety consultants with a qualification requirement that all consultants should be accredited to • Establish a web based directory

10. Education • Simplify the process that schools and similar organisations undertake before taking children on trips. • Introduce a single consent form that covers all activities a child may undertake during his or her time at a school. • Introduce a simplified risk assessment for classrooms. • Shift from a system of risk assessment to a system of risk–benefit assessment and consider reviewing the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 to separate out play and leisure from workplace contexts.

11. Local authorities • Officials who ban events on health and safety grounds should put their reasons in writing.

12. Health and safety legislation • The HSE should produce clear separate guidance under the Code of Practice focused on small and medium businesses engaged in lower risk activities. • The current raft of health and safety regulations should be consolidated into a single set of accessible regulations.

13. Reporting of Injuries • Amend the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995, extending to seven days the period before an injury or accident needs to be reported.

14. Adventure training • Abolish the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority and replace licensing with a code of practice.

15. Reclaiming health and safety for all:Professor Ragnar E Löfstedt

16. Recommendations • Exempting from health and safety law those self-employed whose work activities pose no potential risk of harm to others. • That HSE should review all its ACoPs. The initial phase of the review should be completed by June 2012 so businesses have certainty about what is planned and when changes can be anticipated • That HSE undertakes a programme of sector-specific consolidations to be completed by April 2015. • That legislation is changed to give HSE the authority to direct all local authority health and safety inspection and enforcement activity, in order to ensure that it is consistent and targeted towards the most risky workplaces.

17. Working for a Healthier Tomorrow (Dame Carol Black)

18. Recommendations • The review found that ill health was costing the country £100 billion a year – enough to run the entire UK National Health Service. 

19. Employment rates in Britain are high relative to most other countries. The employment rate of those with a health condition is increasing, but around 7% are still on incapacity benefits and an additional 3% are off work sick at any one time. Ill-health can also impair economic productivity even if it does not lead to immediate absence. Smoking rates have fallen over recent decades, but are still at 22%. Levels of obesity are increasing dramatically and, if current trends continue, around 90% of men and 80% of women will be overweight or obese by 2050. Many common diseases are directly linked to lifestyle factors, but these are generally not the conditions that keep people out of work. Instead, common mental health problems and musculoskeletal disorders are the major causes of sickness absence and worklessness due to ill-health. This is compounded by a lack of appropriate and timely diagnosis and intervention.

20. Government should initiate a business-led health and well-being consultancy service, • offering tailored advice and support and access to occupational health support at a market • rate. This should be geared towards smaller organisations. It should aim to be self-sustaining • in the medium-term, and be fully evaluated and tested against free-to-use services. • Government should launch a major drive to promote understanding of the positive • relationship between health and work among employers, healthcare professionals and • the general public. This should include encouraging young people to understand the • benefits of a life in work and its impact on their families and communities. • Building on the commitment from the leaders of the healthcare profession in the recent • consensus statement, GPs and other healthcare professionals should be supported to • adapt the advice they provide, where appropriate doing all they can to help people enter, • stay in or return to work. • The paper-based sick note should be replaced with an electronic fit note, switching • the focus to what people can do and improving communication between employers, • employees and GPs. • Government should pilot a new Fit for Work service based on case-managed, • multidisciplinary support for patients in the early stages of sickness absence, with the aim • of making access to work-related health support available to all – no longer the preserve • of the few. • When appropriate models for the Fit for Work service are established, access to the service • should be open to those on incapacity benefits and other out-of-work benefits.

21. Conclusion • How will this affect your school? • What do you see as the barriers? • What can YOU do? • How can we adapt to change?

22. END A police safety officer was visiting a primary school in a particularly tough area of Glasgow."Why shouldn't you touch the oven door or the kettle ?" he asked the assembled class.A young girls hand shot into the air."Because you might leave fingerprints" she answered.