Worker killed on a Cemex site as HSE reveals plans

The Surrey-based products firm is now working with the Health and Safety Executive to investigate the incident, in which 44-year-old self-employed construction worker Royston Dean was killed.

The accident is one in a string of deaths on high-profile sites in recent weeks, including two on Laing O’Rourke projects and one on a Bouygues hospital scheme.

The fatalities have marred the image of the industry just as the Government’s safety regulator was preparing to release its long-awaited five-year plan.

Launched by its board of directors yesterday afternoon, the HSE’s new strategy will be out for public consultation for the next three months.

It is hoped the implementation of the new business plan will help drive down fatalities, which have remained close to a stagnant rate in recent years.

HSE chair Judith Hackitt said closer ties with local authorities would be a key focus of the strategy in the hope it will help bring down accident rates among smaller firms.

The most recent set of figures from the HSE revealed a rise in the incident rates for major and over-three-day injuries for the first time in almost a decade.

The increase, which surprised many safety experts, was a blow to the Government’s Strategy for Sustainable Construction, which says major injury rates should be falling by 10 per cent year-on-year.

HSE researchers are now undertaking an in-depth analysis of the figures after chief inspector for construction Stephen Williams labelled the rise as “a real disappointment”.

Ms Hackitt said there would be further pressure on the regulator’s construction division to improve industry safety standards.

She said: “We will continue to put effort into those sectors which continue to carry a high risk and higher actual occurrence of serious injuries and fatalities. Because they carry well-known risks cannot be an excuse for continued performance which is out of line with
what other sectors manage to achieve.

“We may well need to pilot new ways of addressing these persistent areas of concern.”

The investigation into Mr Dean’s death has now been handed over to the HSE by police inspectors.

Mr Dean, who was working on a new Cemex leachate treatment plant at a former landfill tip in Frampton-on-Severn, was killed when a dumper truck overturned on the site. It is understood he was contracted through specialist company Hytech Water, which was appointed to build the plant.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

A Cemex spokeswoman described the incident as “tragic” and said the group was cooperating fully with the HSE investigation.

There were two deaths on Laing sites last month – one at a sewage works in Knostrop and the other at the construction of a data centre near Welwyn Garden City, while Bouygues also suffered a blow when an agency worker was killed on its Broomfield hospital site in Chelmsford.

They followed one fatality and a separate major injury on Hochtief’s Scottish hydro-electric scheme, near Loch Ness, in the weeks prior.

‘NEW STRATEGY IS NOT REVOLUTIONARY’

Health and Safety Executive chair Judith Hackitt has admitted the regulator’s new strategy is “not revolutionary”.

It does, she says, “set out to optimise the performance of the overall health and safety system”.

Ms Hackitt said: “It will clarify the roles of the regulated, the regulator, the workforce and the many others who are part of the system. We want stakeholders to do more than comment – we are particularly keen to engage in dialogue not only on what HSE can or should be doing but also to identify the key active roles which we need others to take to deliver the strategy.”