H:\Policy & Resources\Internet\Item 11 - Appendix I.doc

The Moray Council HEALTH & SAFETY ANNUAL REPORT 2012-2013

1. Purpose 1.1 The purpose of this report is to provide information on health and safety issues

at both a Council and a national level, and to define how the Council is dealing with them. It is also to give an overview of the Council’s health and safety performance corporately during the 12 months from 1st April 2012 to 30th March 2013 and to raise awareness of any major risks we are facing and risk control improvements deemed necessary to the Council’s system.

2. Summary 2.1 The service continues to operate under difficult conditions with

increasing demands and a limited resource. A need to deal reactively with a number of serious issues has been challenging but common lessons have been taken from the incidents, and enhancements made to the recently introduced risk control systems. Enforcement authority activity continues with the Fire Service requiring improvements in fire safety and the HSE focusing on national priorities within waste and construction activities.

2.2 A team talk was issued in April advocating a zero tolerance approach to

breaches of accepted rules or intentional poor practices being employed. 2.3 Communications on safety have been improved with the introduction of a

Safety Forum within Direct Services and all services within it. This is being seen as a pilot exercise to be replicated within all departments on a risk based basis.

2.4 A multi purpose behavioural safety and dangerous occurrence reporting

system has been launched to improve reporting practice, enable better communication and ensure compliance by empowering all staff to guard against poor practice.

3. Background

3.1 A report was considered by the Corporate Management Team in January this

year advocating a course of action for improving the Council’s management of health and safety risks. Many of the changes recommended in that report were longer term goals involving cultural changes within the organisation. It is accepted that this type of transformation, involving deeply ingrained attitudes and behaviours, is difficult to achieve and easy to de-rail. It is possible that at this time of local government reform, where two of the fundamental principles are a drive for efficiency and a need to eliminate failure demand, that the changes required will be sustained as they support these principles. There is the opportunity to bolster some of the organisational and structural changes required to equip the Council to meet future challenges, by using health and safety as an area of common benefit for management, staff and service user. The good practice habits of risk awareness, risk assessment, risk control and sometimes even tolerance and acceptance of risk can be extended into the

APPENDIX 1

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management of other areas that need control. Many of the incidents which have been investigated over the recent past have uncovered some common threads which have a wider applicability than to just health and safety. A lack of forethought, an acceptance of risk and non-compliance, a normalisation of failure and a general attitude of the task being more important than its “safe” completion have all been found to exist to varying degrees in various areas. The main priorities for action advocated in this report will ameliorate the situation. We will focus our attention on the higher risk areas of the Council and provide support and encouragement to ensure delivery of the desired outcomes.

3.2 The Council faces court action over an accident in 2011 where an employee fell

through a roof he was tasked to fix causing himself serious injuries. The case is to be heard soon and will be the subject of a noting report in due course.

4. National Developments. 4.1 The national situation certain parts of the public sector are facing as regards

reducing finances and increasing demand is liable to impact in a number of ways. Restructuring, reducing budgets, staff uncertainty and general austerity measures are all have the potential to cause negative effects on the Council’s risk profile. There are also opportunities to be found in these times of change and constraint to improve our focus on only higher risk areas, and improve general loss control practices.

4.2 The ongoing review of health and safety legislation has required changes to

various council policies and practices. 5. Review and Monitoring of Council Performance. 5.1 Statistical Review

The figures contained in this report are for the twelve month period to end March 2013. The quarterly reports indicate that the figures are remaining constant since the last financial year period. The statistics for this year and comparison with the previous two years are attached at Appendix A. The main points to note are as follows:

As would be expected, Education and Social Care and Environmental Services account for almost all of the incidents reported.

The total number of incidents reported is slightly up on last year but still well below the 2011-11 figure. There has been a slight decrease in incidents involving staff and slight increases in incidents involving pupils and contractors.

The two most common accident types occurring within the Council are slips, trips and falls on the level and manual handling injuries. There is an annoying regularity to this pattern which would seem to infer that action could be taken to reduce the chances of these accidents occurring. This pattern is fairly normal within similar settings and these risks are difficult to eliminate completely within our area of operation.

The violence and aggression statistics (Table 6 onwards of Appendix A) are included in this report in order to provide a comprehensive picture.

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The majority of Violence & Aggression incidents reported are within Education & Social Care and most of these are within one establishment which has only 4 clients. These reports are in compliance with the system employed to manage the clients’ challenging behaviour.

Just over 50% of the 53 schools in Moray report no incidents of violence at all. 42% of the 404 school reports relate to just two children. Of the 315 school reports where the child has a specific diagnosis, over 50% are of an autistic spectrum disorder.

5.2 Review of Incidents/Accidents of Special Note

A disused overhead travelling crane in a shed at the Moycroft waste depot was knocked off its rails by a lorry reversing with its tipping body raised. The crane beam, which weighed approximately 3 tonnes, came to rest on a baler. No one was hurt but the incident had a high potential to have caused injury.

Five incidents also occurred in waste involving the distribution of the new recycling bins. The stacks of bins had been stored outside over a very wet winter and many of the stacks had filled with water. This made the stacks of bins heavy, unstable and difficult to handle resulting in a number of injuries, three reportable to the HSE.

A small ride on roller being used to compact asphalt in a pavement reinstatement in Keith tipped over during a reversing manoeuvre. The operator jumped off the roller as it tipped but was caught under the machine and sustained injuries to his foot and leg.

A worker at a resource centre was helping a client out during a fire evacuation. The client became unsteady and fell, pulling the worker with them into a greenhouse positioned by the path they were on. The client was relatively uninjured, but the worker required multiple stitches in a deep head wound. Throughout the incident, the worker’s main concern was the welfare of the client rather than their own condition.

5.3 Review of Policy and Development Work 5.3.1 General Context: the recent succession of accidents and dangerous

occurrences have provided an opportunity to make some step changes in the way the Council manages health and safety. It is not the best of ways to decide that things need to change, but the impetus when dealing with actual events rather than hypothetical possibilities is much greater and likely to have a more lasting effect. It is understood that asking managers to take on more work at this time of constant change and budgetary constraint is not going to be easy. By the careful design of any new systems, and proper support during the implementation phase, the benefits to be gained in productivity, reduced absenteeism, enhanced engagement and less failure demand will far outweigh any investment of time or cost of improvement to facilities.

5.3.2 Service Plan: the service plan commitments for Health and Safety are

contained within two main objective headings, “Engagement and Leadership” and “Enabling Service Improvement and Reducing Costs.” The main actions are in engendering improvements in safety culture and development of the current system of safety auditing tools with attendant support for both programs, as reflected in the summary section above.

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5.3.3 Unplanned Reactive Work: Fire Issues : The fire brigade continue to identify improvements required to reduce fire risk. Care facilities and schools are at the top of their priority list. Evacuation of disabled occupants or visitors is a duty which used to be offset to the emergency services but the requirement for the Council to manage that without reliance on the emergency services is now clearly understood and being factored in. Historically, the Disability Discrimination Act and now the Equality Act 2010, has encouraged the enablement of disabled access. Changes in fire legislation now require reconsideration of some of the areas due to the difficulties of egress during an emergency situations.

5.4 Conclusions and Development work 5.4.1 The results of active and reactive monitoring, the investigation of incidents

which have recently occurred and the discussions at various safety forums have all highlighted similar issues which could leave the Council exposed to the risk of injuries, loss and legal action. CMT has given a renewed top level commitment to resolving these issues and a sustainable requirement to report in real time when weaknesses are uncovered. The specific actions to achieve these objectives are founded in the 2012 annual report and due to the fact that they relate to cultural issues which are not easy to change in the short term, this can be seen as a continuance of previous work rather than a change of direction. The last report was submitted in January 2013 so some of the actions are still current within this reporting period. A corporate short life working group of managers has been formed to oversee the implementation issues of these improvement actions. They will act as the conduit between departments and CMT on issues of manageability of change.

ACTION PLAN The main points that the Health and Safety service will be focusing on in the coming 12 months are:

ACTIONS TARGET FOR COMPLETION

Major incidents to be reported to the relevant corporate director immediately who will inform the other members of CMT

Immediate effect

Implement, develop and report to CMT on safety conditions within all higher risk departments

Jan 2014

Continuance of programs of compliance monitoring, training and communication

Jan 2014

Introduce measures to promote leadership in health & safety and to better demonstrate commitment. This to be founded on better compliance monitoring.

Oct 2013

Develop management awareness of good safety practice. Activity to be dependant on risk in areas of responsibility.

Oct 2013

ITEM: 11 PAGE: 9

APPENDIX A

2012-13 Health & Safety Annual Report Analysis

Table 1- Health & Safety Incidents by Department 2010/11 to 2012/13

2010-1

1

2011-1

2

2012-1

3

Education 88 73 84

Environmental Services 99 65 81

Social Care 99 65 56

Corporate Services 4 7 5

Chief Executives 1 2 2

Total 291 212 228

Table 1

The total number of reported incidents in 2012/13 is slightly above that of 2011/12 but still

remains below that of 2010/11. This is due to the increases in Education and Environmental

Services where Education has almost returned to their 2010/11 level and Environmental

Services has had a 25% increase in reported incidents.

Figure 1

ITEM: 11 PAGE: 10

APPENDIX A

Table 2 – Health & Safety Incidents by Classification of Person Involved

2010-1

1

2011-1

2

2012-1

3

Employee 184 137 131

School Pupil 59 30 56

Client/Service User 42 37 34

Member of Public 4 8 1

Contractor 1 5

Work Placement 1 1

Grand Total 291 212 228

Table 2

Figure 2 above shows that the number of reported incidents involving employees has only

slightly reduced over the previous year, however there has been a a 33% reduction over the

3 year period. Those incidents involving school pupils has fluctuated and comparing figure 1

with figure 2 shows that the majority of the Education incidents involve pupils. All but 1 one

of the incidents involving a Client/Service User was in Social Care.

Figure 2

ITEM: 11 PAGE: 11

APPENDIX A

Table 3 - Health & Safety Incidents by Incident Type 2012/13

2012/13 Incident Type Clie

nt/

Serv

ice U

ser

Contr

acto

r

Em

plo

ye

e

Mem

ber

of

Pu

blic

Schoo

l P

up

il

Work

Pla

cem

ent

Gra

nd

To

tal

Slip, trip or fall on the same level 17 4 42 25 1 89

Manual handling 6 26 6 38

Hit by a moving/falling/flying object 2 18 6 26

Hitting a fixed or stationery object 3 1 8 7 19

Damage to property/equipment/vehicles 12 12

Fall from a height 4 4 1 2 11

Trapped by something collapsing/overturning 8 8

Exposed to a harmful substance 5 5

Exposed to fire, temperature extremes or explosion 1 3 1 5

Attack by an animal 3 3

Defective equipment 2 1 3

Contact with moving machinery/material being machined 1 1 2

Needlestick contact 2 2

Other 1 1 2

Transport 1 1 2

Inappropriate equipment used 1 1

Grand Total 34 5 131 1 56 1 228

Table 3

Figure 3

ITEM: 11 PAGE: 12

APPENDIX A

Table 3 shows that the most recorded type of incident is slip, trip and fall on the same level

affecting employees and school pupils the most, this type of incident has also increased from

the 60 incidents in the previous year as can be seen in table 4. The next 3 most numerous

specific incident types are manual handling, hit by a moving/falling/flying object and hitting a

fixed or stationary object. These incident types were also in the top 5 in the previous year

and the incidents of manual handling and hitting a fixed or stationary object have both

increased.

Table 4 – Health & Safety Incidents by Incident Type 2010-2013

2010

-11

2011

-12

2012

-13

Slip, trip or fall on the same level 117 60 89

Manual handling 32 28 38

Hit by a moving/falling/flying object 30 27 26

Hitting a fixed or stationery object 20 16 19

Damage to property/equipment/vehicles 22 24 12

Fall from a height 9 9 11

Trapped by something collapsing/overturning 3 8

Exposed to a harmful substance 6 9 5

Exposed to fire, temeprature extremes or explosion 11 3 5

Attack by an animal 10 3

Defective equipment 3 7 3

Contact with moving machinery/material being machined 12 14 2

Needlestick contact 5 3 2

Other 5 2 2

Transport 2 2 2

Inappropriate equipment used 1 1 1

Contact with electricity 2

Total 288 207 228 Table 4

ITEM: 11 PAGE: 13

APPENDIX A

Table 5 – Incident Type against Outcome

2012/13 Incident Type

Dang

ero

us O

ccure

nce**

Majo

r In

jury

*

Min

or

Inju

ry

Occupatio

nal Illn

ess**

Over

3 D

ay In

jury

(R

IDD

OR

)*

To

tal

Slip, trip or fall on the same level 2 6 77 4 89

Manual handling 2 2 30 1 3 38

Hit by a moving/falling/flying object 6 18 2 26

Hitting a fixed or stationery object 1 16 2 19

Damage to property/equipment/vehicles 12 12

Fall from a height 1 9 1 11

Trapped by something collapsing/overturning 3 2 3 8

Exposed to a harmful substance 5 5

Exposed to fire, temperature extremes or explosion 1 4 5

Attack by an animal 3 3

Defective equipment 3 3

Contact with moving machinery/material being machined 1 1 2

Needlestick contact 1 1 2

Other 1 1 2

Transport 1 1 2

Inappropriate equipment used 1 1

Total 31 11 172 1 13 228

Table 5

Of the 10 recorded Major Injuries 4 involved school pupils and 6 involved employees:

3 pupils broke bones as a result of a slip, trip or fall which all happened outside while

playing

1 pupil lost the tip of a finger when it was trapped in a door

3 employees were involved in a slip, trip or fall in which 1 slipped and suffered a

broken pelvis, 1 slipped resulting in severe pain in their knees, arm and neck and 1

was assisting a client who grabbed his arm knocking him off balance into a

greenhouse where a pane of glass broke and severely gashed his head

1 employee broke bones in their hand during manual handling of a wheelie bin

1 employee bruised their pelvis and damaged knee ligaments when a stack of bins

collapsed

1 employee trapped their foot when tarring the footpath the roller went too far over

the kerb and toppled over

ITEM: 11 PAGE: 14

APPENDIX A

Table 6 - Incidents of Violence and Aggression 2011/12 to 2012/13

2011/12 2012/13

Maybank 466 508

Education 344 404

Social Care 61 65

Environmental Services 3 5

Corporate Services 2 1

Table 6

Table 6 shows that the incidents of Violence and Aggression have increased from the

previous year. The figures from Maybank do not appear in the figures currently reported

quarterly to committee. The Council only took over running of Maybank in April 2012 from

Of the Education recorded incidents 170 (42%) are attributable to 2 pupils with 107 (26%)

and 63 (16%) incidents respectively. There are 8 pupils with greater than 10 recorded

incidents totalling 250 (62%) of recorded incidents.

Support staff record the most incidents in Education with 271 (67%) recorded incidents and

of these, Education Auxiliaries are the most common with 204 (50%) recorded incidents.

Table 6 shows that after Education the most prevalent recording of Violence and Aggression

is by Social Care. In 2012/13, 34 (52%) of these recorded incidents were attributable to 1

individual. Care Assistants were the most common reporter with 43 (61%) recorded

incidents.

Figure 4

ITEM: 11 PAGE: 15

APPENDIX A

Figure 5 – Incidents of Violence and Aggression by location 2012/13

The place of work of the employee reporting the Education recorded incident is shown in

figure 5 below. Most of the incidents (66%) happen while in class.

Figure 5

The place of work of the employee reporting the Corporate recorded incidents is shown in

figure 6 below.

Figure 6

ITEM: 11 PAGE: 16

APPENDIX A

Table 7 - Violence and Aggression in Education by Incident Type 2011/12 to 2012/13

Education

Incident Type 2011/12 2012/13

Physical assault (no weapon) 250 279

Threatening/Menacing behaviour 15 46

Anti-Social/Disruptive behaviour 30 27

Physical assault (weapon) 20 19

Verbal abuse 12 15

Threat physical assault (no weapon) 7 5

Threat physical assault (weapon) 2 4

Other 3 3

Verbal threats 4 3

Breach of security

2

Malicious communications/Slander and libel 1 1

Total 344 404

Table 7

Figure 7

The most commonly occurring incident type in Education is physical assault (no weapon)

with 279 (69%) of recorded incidents in 2012/13. This has increased since 2011/12 along

with incidents of threatening/menacing behaviour which has now become the second most

common incident type.

ITEM: 11 PAGE: 17

APPENDIX A

Table 8 - Corporate Recorded Violence and Aggression by Incident Type 2011/12 to

2012/13

Corporate 2011/12 2012/13

Physical Assault 2 27

Disruptive Behaviour 5 9

Physical Assault (with intent to injure) 11 7

Physical Assault (no intent to injure) 17 6

Menacing Behaviour 4 4

Physical Assault/Disruptive Behaviour 4

Verbal abuse 13 4

Breach of Security 5 3

Anti-Social/Disruptive Behaviour 2

Vandalism 2 2

Breach of Security/Disruptive Behaviour 1

Malicious calls/Slander and libel 1

Verbal Abuse/Breach of Security/Disruptive Behaviour 1

Breach of Security/Menacing & Disruptive Behaviour 1

Disruptive & Menacing Behaviour 1

Other 2

Physical Assault (no intent to injure)/Disruptive Behaviour 1

Physical Assault (no intent to injure) & Weapon/Improvised weapon involved 1

Weapon/Improvised weapon involved, Menacing Behaviour 1

Total 66 71

Table 8

Figure 8

Since 2011/12 there has been a reduction in the incidents of verbal abuse but an increase in

incidents involving physical assault.