Paying for your job with your life

1:30pm Monday 12th February 2007

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Lancashire businesses need to do more to protect their staff, a health and safety boss has suggested.

The regional director of the Health and Safety Executive - the body responsibe for advising against and investigating accidents at work - has revealed that the North West has some of the highest figures for work related deaths in the country.

Nationally the figure for such accidents is slowly going down, but in the North West the figure is rising, thanks to the biggest cause of deaths: falls from height and those involving vehicles.

Now the Health and Safety Executive has revealed that these statistics are partly ocurring because of the type of industry - traditional heavy or manufacturing -which is based in the North West - of which Lancashire has a high proportion.

David Ashton, regional director, said: "The figure is going up here.

"The trend is going the opposite way to Great Britain as a whole.

"Partly but not entirely it's focused on the traditional, heavy or manufacturing businesses but we know it isn't entirely that because there are other regions with a similar history which don't have the same high rate."

The North West's figures, which show 31 fatal injuries, compare to 11 in the North East and 12 in the West Midlands.

These figures do not include the deaths of self-employed workers in the county, such as the Morcambe Bay cockle pickers.

And there were also hundreds of workers simply injured in workplace accidents.

But Mr Ashton said that there was much that Lancashire businesses could do to help.

He said: "We have a good health and safety infrastructure of advice and education and it's a case of making good use of it.

"Look at the information we have and asess the risk."