Increase in number of Shropshire Council incidents reported to Health and Safety Executive

The number of incidents reportable to the HSE for employees and non-employees increased in 2017-18 compared to 2016-17.

But the number of minor accidents fell compared to the year before.

The new data has come from an annual report on health and safety performance for 2017-2018, which is set to go to Shropshire Council's cabinet meeting next week.

The report says: "Good progress has been made during 2017/2018 on managing health and safety across the council.

"Reportable employee accidents to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have increased and minor accidents have decreased compared to last year’s figures.

"Benchmarking with other unitary councils show that Shropshire Council performs well in terms of accident statistics.

"Service areas and the health and safety team work well together. The council continues to maintain a good relationship with the HSE."

The number of incidents reportable to the HSE for employees has increased from 12 to 16, and from seven to 10 for non-employees.

Of the employee incidents, eight were slips, trips and falls, three were related to manual handling, two were physical violence, and there was one incident relating to a collision, a fall from height and impact injury.

This year, Shropshire Council had 693 accidents in total, comprising 27 RIDDORS (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013), 549 minor accidents and 114 near-misses. The previous year’s figure was 797.

Of the 549 minor accidents reported, 301 were to employees, 63 to service users, 27 to visitors, and 149 to pupils. The remainder were low numbers in the categories ‘contractor’, ‘agency staff’, ‘trainees’, ‘volunteers’ and ‘work experience'.

The previous year there were 635 minor accidents reported in total.

The main causes of the minor injuries to employees were 113 violent incidents. This has slightly increased from last year, as there were 103.

The report adds: "The remaining incidents related to the behaviour of pupils in mainstream schools and incidents reported by staff working operationally in areas such as parking warden services, housing options, benefits, and customer services.

"The customer services hubs where many of these services are based had a number of incidents this year, and remedial action has been undertaken using security, additional police presence and layout advice from crime protection to minimise these. Some additional security has been deployed at these sites also.

"Management of violence and aggression training is available at differing skill levels to deal with actual and potential violence and aggression. The majority of this training is job specific and tailored to manage the challenging behaviour of pupils and service users.

"Personal safety training is also available to raise awareness of avoiding and managing violence."