UCATT warn against privatising 'safety'
March 19, 2010
Conservative plans to privatise safety inspections have drawn a bitter reaction from the construction union UCATT, which is warning that they will increase the number of deaths and serious injuries suffered by construction workers.
The Conservatives confirmed this week that they intend to press ahead with plans to allow large construction companies to conduct private safety audits of their sites. Once a company obtains a private safety audit, HSE inspectors will be barred from entering the site unless there is an emergency.
"This proves that the Tories cannot be trusted with workers' safety," UCATT General Secretary Alan Ritchie said. "If implemented, this will effectively end independent safety inspections and will lead to a greater number of workers being maimed and killed at work."
Under the proposals, first unveiled during last year's Conservative conference in a document entitled Regulation in the Post-bureaucratic Age, companies judged to be "low risk" could commission a private safety audit which would bar all their sites from being visited by inspectors.
Conservative business spokesman John Penrose has suggested that the plans would mean that large companies would be able to acquire safety audits so the HSE could focus its resources on small companies.
"Construction deaths are all too frequent and they occur on sites run by both large and small companies," Mr Ritchie countered. "To ban inspections on sites run by some companies is not going to make the industry safer."
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