Four out of five health and safety professionals think the Government has little understanding of their role.
According to a survey carried out by recruitment consultancy, JAM Recruitment, 59 per cent of more than 600 practitioners questioned, felt that David Cameron’s comments about ‘killing off the health and safety culture’ will lead to an increase in workplace accidents.
Nearly 70 per cent of those surveyed felt that negative media coverage was deterring younger workers from entering the profession. Indeed only 13 per cent of those who participated in the survey were under the age of 35, prompting JAM to suggest there could be a future skills shortage.
The consultancy’s health and safety team leader, Sheikh Ullah, said: “The ageing talent pool in health and safety is a concern. The fact that just 13 per cent of practitioners are under the age of 35 suggests that health and safety, as a career, isn’t getting the right exposure among the younger generation.
The survey also found that the current economic climate had led to a reduced focus on health and safety among many of the participants’ employers. Nearly half respondents confirmed that their company did not feel health and safety was ‘business critical’ during times of recession, and 41 per cent said their safety budget had halved this year.
Ullah added: “Health and safety is a difficult job market at the moment, with many employers shedding health and safety staff and wages being continually driven down in what is very much an employer-led market.
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Perhaps the fact that Health and Safety law is one of the very few strains of our written law that has written guidance in plain english available to all that any one with half a brain can read for them selves without the use of a lawyer is the very reason that David Cameron wants to dilute it as its doing his croney legal friends out of a job. far better would be to simplify contracts into plain english with ‘idiot guidance’ and save vast sums on legal commercial disputes.
I’m one of the many who think the Government does not understand what H&S is about.
In common with some old-school, “output at all costs” managers, they appear to view H&S as simply an obstruction to getting things done. They, of course, will not be the people injured or even killed to obtain higher output.
Yes, there CAN be too much bureaucracy if we’re not careful. However, the safer companies tend to be the more efficient ones. They take a good look at what they do and do it right