Health and Safety Focus on 'High Risk' Industries

Jersey's Health and Safety Inspectorate has vowed to target workplaces exposing people to unnecessary risk, despite its limited resources.

Five companies were prosecuted in the Royal Court last year for breaching Health & Safety legislation, following 90 investigations into serious workplace accidents and incidents.

Inspectors went into 148 'high-risk' workplaces and received 203 complaints.

Director of Health and Safety Tammy Fage says her team was often surprised by what they found.

"The case that we had an additional inspector given to us in the middle of last year has allowed us to go out and do a lot more proactive work, which is where we want to be to try and prevent the accidents happening in the first place.

"But that also exposes us to a lot more workplaces where actually standards haven't been as good as we've expected, so I think being more visible has encouraged and resulted in the fact that more enforcement action was required to bring people up to standard."

Of the 148 inspections, 90% were related to construction or removing asbestos-removal materials.

In better news - the number of people claiming benefit for workplace accidents, stress and ill-health is at a record low.

There were 1345 short-term incapacity claims in 2018, despite the high levels of employment.

"We'll continue to focus our limited inspector resource on the industries that are highest-risk and that's where we can make the most difference.

"Construction obviously will remain a key focus, but there's also other areas that we may be targeting that present risks in their own way." - Tammy Fage, Director of Health and Safety.