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Workplace deaths fall in county
Business news from the Lancashire Evening Post
The head of the Health and Safety Executive in Lancashire has told firms to focus on “real rather than trivial dangers” to cut the number of deaths in the county’s workplaces.
David Snowball, director for the HSE in the North, said the number of deaths in businesses in the county fell from eight to five in the past year.
There were 548 major injuries in the county during the same year.
The director said the deaths showed issues around health and safety were still not “taken seriously” by businesses.
Mr Snowball said: “I hope that in 2013 employers will tackle the real rather than the trivial dangers that workers face and not mire themselves in pointless paperwork so we can reduce the number of workplace deaths and major injuries.
“Each year, instead of enjoying the occasion, families of workers who failed to come home from work spend Christmas and the New Year thinking of the loved ones who are not there to enjoy it with them.
“Hundreds of other workers who have had their lives changed by major injury will be experiencing difficulties of their own.”
Figures published on Thursday show 2,231 workers in Lancashire suffered injuries which required at least three days off work, a reduction from 2,422 in the previous year.
The latest provisional figures show that nationwide, on average, six in every million workers were killed while at work between April 2011 and March 2012.
High-risk industries include construction, which had 49 deaths last year, agriculture with 33 deaths, manufacturing with 31 deaths and waste and recycling with 5 deaths - making up more than half of all workplace deaths in Great Britain during 2011/12.
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Sunday 19 May 2013
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