David England’s new book argues the profession isn’t ‘broken’ but requires ‘restorative care’.
With 2024 marking half a century since the introduction of the concept of health and safety in the UK, the last 50 years have arguably seen a dramatic improvement in workplace safety, as well as positively promoting safety among all employers. But despite fatal injuries at their lowest level, self-reported workplace injuries have seen a rise in recent years, and stress-related absence now accounts for nearly half of all lost time at work. And still, each year, many thousands of people are estimated to die prematurely due to exposure in the workplace to chemicals and dust. So is health and safety still a driving force or has hit the buffers?
Previous works by myself and co-author Dr Andy Painting have been on construction safety (An Effective Strategy for Safe Design in Engineering and Construction (Wiley)) and on promoting a pragmatic approach to assessing risk (Effectively Managing the Case for Safety (Routledge)). In this, their third book, (Where next for Health and Safety (Emerald)) we examine the history, implementation, and legacy of health and safety in the UK and ask “is it still fit for purpose?”
The book is the product of extensive research and interviews with many people at the top of the safety profession and examines how the UK arrived at the position it found itself in when, in 1972, Lord Robens was commissioned to report on workplace safety. The book then goes on to detail many of the issues that respondents felt were relevant to not only the implementation of health and safety today, but also to the profession as a whole.
Finally, the book provides a set of recommendations, covering such issues as the promotion, implementation, governance, and enforcement of health and safety. These recommendations also call on practitioners, regulators, examiners, institutes, and even the government to lean in to the discussion in order to determine where next for health and safety.
Interviewees for the book gave their time readily, and the relaxed style of the conversations enabled the authors to gauge the true sense of feeling that exists among some of the most prominent people working in safety-critical roles. This included both national and international concerns over workplace safety, and the responses that other national jurisdictions have made, or are making.
The authors’ conclusions are that health and safety is not “broken”, but is certainly in need of some restorative care. A journey that started at least 200 years ago in the UK has arrived at a system that is fundamentally robust but which requires input from a number of directions in order to not only improve each individual’s safety and welfare at work, but also the welfare of UK Plc. As the authors state in the book:
“To not see that workplace safety is the most important issue in ensuring enhanced productivity and prosperity in the nation as a whole is perhaps the greatest offence that we have committed as a society.”
The issues raised in the book, and in particular its recommendations at the end, sometimes make for uncomfortable reading. But the thrust of the work is to promote the discussion about how workplace safety can be built upon for the next 50 years, and how the nation as a whole can benefit from that.
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