Cautious welcome to new Scottish safety body
01/09/05
The first meeting of the new HSC-established 'partnership for health and safety at work in Scotland' which took place in Glasgow has been met with a cautious welcome by Trade Unions and Thompsons Scotland.
While the body is charged with better co-ordination of expertise and action in the country and to counter work-related injury and ill health concerns remain that Scotland workforce remains relatively unprotected as demostrated by the relatively high proportion of Scots workers injured each year.
Its membership comprises businesses, trade unions, UK, Scottish and local government, the HSE, the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives and health and safety professionals, who will help implement HSC's GB-wide strategy to improve workplace health and safety.
Meetings will take place 3 times each year.
Priorities and planned actions for the first year include:
identifying occupational health and safety expertise and training resources across Scotland;
increased worker involvement in health and safety;
examining the scope for good neighbour relations between industry and colleges / universities;
helping small businesses to do health and safety better; and
integrating health and safety into public sector procurement.
The HSC Commissioner speaking of the establishment of the body said
"Great Britain and Scotland has one of the best records in Europe on workplace health and safety. But there are still too many people being hurt or made ill at work.
This new partnership shows the commitment of a wide range of organisations to work together to make a real impact on health and safety in Scottish workplaces. It means that we will see more co-ordination of effort, less duplication and more sharing of knowledge of what works and what doesn't. We will know we have succeeded if we make a real difference to people's working lives.
By bringing together all the key players and stakeholders in a partnership, we aim to target Scotland's priorities for improving health and safety more effectively.
But this is also about co-ordinating effort across devolved and reserved government interests to promote the benefits to people, businesses and Scotland's economy of working in a safe and healthy environment.
We also know that there are many examples of good practice within the health and safety community, as well as by individual businesses with a good health and safety record. This partnership will help to spread best practice across the whole of Scotland."
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