PLAN TO INVOLVE WORKERS - LORD HUNT TELLS LOCAL AUTHORITIES

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PLAN TO INVOLVE WORKERS - LORD HUNT TELLS LOCAL AUTHORITIES
14 December 2005 - HSE InfoLine

Lord Hunt, Minister responsible for health and safety at work, today called on local authorities to ensure that they make worker involvement a key element of their health and safety work programme for 2006/7. His announcement heralded the launch of the Health and Safety Commission's local authority phase of its Worker Involvement Programme.

Speaking at the joint Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services and Health and Safety Executive national conference held in Westminster today, Lord Hunt recognised the important role that local authorities play in improving occupational safety and health. Lord Hunt said: "Local authorities are responsible for enforcement in over 50% of work premises with almost half the employed workforce and the decisions you make on risk have a major impact."

HSC/E believe that the people best placed to make workplaces safer from harm are the staff and managers who work in them. Supporting this, Lord Hunt said: " Our ambitions for lower rates of injury and ill-health cannot succeed without the participation and vigilance of those who work with the risks and their representative organisations, the unions.

"An actively engaged workforce is one of the foundations that supports good health and safety. I would urge workers to engage with their employer in pursuit of healthier and safer workplaces."

Lord Hunt also called on all local authorities to "put worker involvement on their plans of work for health and safety activities for the coming year which, working through the partnership arrangements, will contribute enormously to making worker involvement a reality."

The Worker Involvement Programme will be working with HSE regional Partnership Managers to encourage local authorities to put worker involvement into their plans of work. A variety of tools will be developed in the coming months to help local authorities in making worker involvement central to the management of health and safety in their sector.

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About: HSE InfoLine
Britain's Health and Safety Commission (HSC) and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are responsible for the regulation of almost all the risks to health and safety arising from work activity in Britain.

The HSE looks after health and safety in nuclear installations and mines, factories, farms, hospitals and schools, offshore gas and oil installations, the safety of the gas grid and the movement of dangerous goods and substances, railway safety, and many other aspects of the protection both of workers and the public. Local authorities are responsible to HSC for enforcement in offices, shops and other parts of the services sector.

The HSC is sponsored by the Department of Work and Pensions and is ultimately accountable to the Minister of State for Work, the Right Honourable Jane Kennedy MP.

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