Safety matters - October 2026

Accidents waiting to happen… but didn’t

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) doesn’t always accelerate from zero to prosecution when you are getting something wrong. If they inspect and find health and safety shortfalls they may issue improvement notices to put you on the right path. 

These formally tell you what you have done wrong (and link to the law), state the inspector’s reasons behind this and give you a deadline (a minimum of 21 days) by which to set things straight.

Receiving one is a wake-up call to act, so if you get an improvement notice and are not sure what to do, please contact us.

The HSE recently did prosecute a West Country sawmill after they failed to act upon no fewer than three improvement notices.

The notices came after inspectors identified that employees had not been trained to use ride-operated lift trucks, had not been screened for health risks associated with wood dust, and had not been properly fitted for protective face masks.

The outcome was a £20,000 fine for the company plus £5,000 in costs and a separate £5,000 fine for a director and £2,500 in costs. The court also granted HSE’s application to disqualify the defendant from acting as a company director for five years.

Thankfully, though, in this instance, no human harm was reported.

Grenfell – Prosecutions draw nearer

If ever we needed a reminder of the legal risk of getting health and safety wrong, on top of the risk of harm, it is the Grenfell fire.

Not only did 72 people avoidably lose their lives, with hundreds more suffering physical and psychological injuries; now the Metropolitan Police have referred files on 20 firms and 54 people to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

There are direct health and safety offences alongside gross negligence manslaughter, corporate manslaughter and misconduct in public office.

Health and safety is not voluntary, and while the Grenfell tragedy ranks as a worst-case scenario, there are many less severe incidents that SMEs are continually at risk of experiencing.

So if you would like support ensuring you are complying with the rules of your industry and general health and safety law, both to keep people safe and avoid legal risk, please get in touch with us today. 

Why near misses can be a blessing, if you act on them!

A near miss is less severe than an accident because the full consequences did not occur.  But they are a valuable learning opportunity if you act upon them, a grim look into the future of what could come to pass if you do not remedy weak points in your working practices.

Maintaining a near-miss register can be a valuable part of your safety culture. The higher risk your organisation, the more important it becomes. Investigation, followed by improvements to behaviours, processes and procedures, is what really matters.

An HSE press release in September told a tragic story of a man who was killed after two companies had not learnt the lessons from a near miss the year before.

The man was a coach driver who was walking along a London street. He was struck by a 130kg windowpane that had fallen from a 26th storey penthouse under construction. Appalling as this was, it was made even worse by the fact that one year previously the same thing had happened but the falling glass had just missed two workers.

The window had been designed to open outwards, meaning that if it failed, it would fall directly below.  It had just one restrictor attached with a single screw. It had not been approved for the curved penthouse design.

The simple solution, only applied after the tragic second incident, was for the window to open inwards so if it failed it would fall into the flat.

Between the two companies, they paid more than £1.5 million in fines and costs, but of course that pales into insignificance against the life lost.

The clear lesson is to have a culture of recording near misses, and having people in your business curious enough and motivated to react, investigating and implementing better ways of doing things in the aftermath.

Connected to this, but a specific regulation with more prescription is RIDDOR – Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations. 

This does what it says on the tin, legally requiring you to report certain incidents. Some of these will be injuries or deaths that actually happened, while others fall under that “near miss” classification.

If an incident falls within RIDDOR’s scope reporting it is not a “nice to have” option. It must be done. To work out how compliance with near misses and RIDDOR applies to your business, please get in touch.

Health and safety “shuts down” conker tournament!

To end on something lighter, apparently a conker tournament has been cancelled because of health and safety. When you hear stories like this it tends to make the eyes roll, but in this case you will probably agree it sounds justified…

It is an extreme conker tournament which follows “Battle Royale” rules. This effectively means that almost anything goes, provided the two opponents are facing each other and take turns to have three strikes each. Wrestling, stomping (on the conkers), and conker modifications are all permitted, but this is not the reason why it has been cancelled.

he event was cancelled by the venue, a brewery, because it was so popular the previous year, with nearly 2,000 people attending, that the organisers did not feel it could be hosted safely.

That does sound like a sensible and legitimate reason to call it off. In many other cases, there is a suspicion that people hide behind the excuse of health and safety when they simply don’t want to proceed with an event. 

Indeed, the HSE long had a myth-buster panel in which they picked apart apparent health and safety cancellations made incorrectly in their name. It included conkers in the school playground once and, if memory serves correctly, was to do with the risk of conker shards flying into eyes.

Here’s to hoping the Extreme Conker Championship finds a suitable venue for 2027 and someone can once again win “The golden nut”.

Three training courses that will help

With a theme of following and not following basic health and safety, plus failing to act on near misses, below are three eLearning health and safety courses that will help.

Our eLearning courses are fast, convenient and low-cost ways in which you can upskill the health and safety knowledge base in your business.

They work by you purchasing credits which you allocate against employees to undertake relevant courses. They can cost as little as £20 + VAT per person per course and can be started, paused and completed at the learner's convenience, while providing a clear compliance audit trail of who has completed each course.

H&S Essentials – This 45-minute course is approved by IOSH, IIRSM, and RoSPA. It has sections on hazards and health and safety responsibilities, leaving participants with a basic grounding of how to maintain a safe workplace.

Accident Reporting – Accident Reporting is a simple 15-minute course that covers the background of accident reporting, what should be recorded and how to report an accident. It is approved by IIRSM and accredited as CPD. It is suitable for anyone and helps you work towards compliance with RIDDOR.

Accident Investigation – This is aimed at managers and employers who are responsible for investigating accidents. It lasts 40 minutes and looks at the legal responsibilities, the benefits of investigations, the scale of investigation you should apply to given accidents and the investigation process.

For more details, please contact us today to discuss your training requirements and how we can support your business.