HSE Announce Waste & Recycling Inspection Programme

Oct 4 2022

HSE Announce Waste & Recycling Inspection Programme

The HSE have announced they will be undertaking an inspection programme for the waste and recycling sector from October 2022 – March 2023.

These unannounced visits have been deemed necessary by the Health and Safety Executive due to the high incidence of work-related ill health and injury across the industry.

The purpose of the inspection programme across this high-risk sector is to target workplace transport at waste and recycling sites; and machinery guarding.

The reason behind this is that together, these two issues account for most of the serious and fatal injuries within the sector, accounting for a fatality rate 17 times greater than across other industries.

Although the industry has been highly monitored by the HSE over recent years, poor health and safety standards are still being recorded in key areas.

The HSE enforcement inspection campaign has been created to target two key priorities:

·        To reduce the number of people being struck by moving vehicles.

·        To reduce the number of workers being caught in moving machinery.

Over the last 7 years there has been an estimated 4,000 non-fatal injuries across the sector and an average of 8 fatalities annually in the waste industry. Over three quarters of all fatal injuries were related to transport, machinery and being struck by objects.

The Stop‘N’Go concept was designed with the waste and recycling sector at the forefront of its design and conception to make communication clearer amongst operatives and to reduce accidents.

The trials we undertook prior to launch in 2021 highlighted that 89% of users recorded improved signal visibility due to the universal colour association to red and green, or as we know it, stop, and go.

If you want to make your visual communications with drivers 89% more effective why not try the Stop'N'Go range of gloves.

Designed to make signalling and directing traffic safer and easier and trialled extensively in the workplace, we’re confident it will make a positive impact on your site and in your operation. 

Click here to request a free trial!

The HSE inspection programme will cover the whole of Great Britain and is in force from October 2022 until the end of March 2023. Full guidance on what to expect during the inspection can be found here.