Conference / Speeches

Health and Safety Report 2006.

Since my last report the Federation has made some important progress in relation to Health and Safety issues. Perhaps the most important of which is the successful completion by several of your colleagues at a recently held Health and Safety Representatives Course. These representatives will now have important rights that are enshrined within law which enable them to:-

1. Inspect the workplace regularly to indentify potential hazards and causes of accidents
2. Investigate colleagues complaints concerning health and safety issues at work
3. Make representations to our employer on matters arising out of health, safety and affecting their colleagues at work
4. Investigate accidents or dangerous occurrences
5. Inspect relevant health and safety documents
6. Establish joint employee representative safety committee

They also have Consultation rights, particularly in relation to the introduction of any new measures at a workplace that may substantially affect health and safety. Our employer is also required to provide adequate facilities and the duty time to enable the Safety Representative to carry out their function.

I would personally like to thank those members of the Federation who have accepted the role and was particularly pleased to see officers who are young in service showing a great deal of enthusiasm for the course and the desire to represent their colleagues. May I say that this was a two day course and will not make anyone an expert in the field and so please don't expect that. However, I hope that this is only a start and I will make efforts to identify additional training to ensure that we have a pool of relatively well trained, well informed representatives.

Contact has been made and now maintained with the Health and Safety Leadership of the Police Federation of England and Wales and I receive very regular updates of information regarding issues relating to Health and Safety. This will be passed to your representatives. As your representative I attended, at their invitation, their bi-annual seminar. As a result of that an invitation was also received to attend the Number One Region Health and Safety Committee meeting. This is progress and I encourage our new Safety Representatives to make contact with the representatives of regions within which their Units are situated and engage in communication that can only be beneficial to the membership of this Federation.

As Federation representative I also attend the Force Health, Safety and Environmental Group that is held at least quarterly and chaired by the Deputy Chief Constable. This indicates, by ACPO Chairmanship, a partnership and consultative approach to managing Health and Safety and underpins the commitment by our Chief Officers to drive Health and Safety from the top to maintain it at the forefront of business objectives.

A Health and Safety Committee should also be established, if they have not been established already, at each Operational Unit and your Safety Representatives should be an integral part of those committees. It's important that we have this consultation and important that any of your concerns in relation to Health and Safety, that cannot be resolved in station, are brought to the Health, Safety and Environmental forum.

At the last Conference the Dounreay representative indicated that new entrants to the Force would not be trained with Glock pistol. There was concern that this would mean, as the G36 became the primary weapon, that the Glock would be removed from our armoury. As a consequence of that, at the invitation of the Chief Constable, I attended a meeting of the Officer Safety and Firearms Working Group. A group on which I feel the CNP Federation should have automatic representation. At this meeting, as a result of risk assessments undertaken by Operational Unit Commanders and of the concerns of our members a decision was taken to re-instate Glock training in initial firearms courses. However, a review was to be undertaken of officer safety, less lethal and firearms options by Mr Colin Burrows, a specialist in the field.

As I indicated earlier, training is also important. Not only further Health and Safety training for our Safety Representatives, but also training for every member of the Force. Health and Safety training should be an integral part of initial training, of Supervisory officer training and particularly important to those officers who command Operational Units most, if not all of whom, are Federation colleagues and who have the responsibility, on behalf of our employer, for leadership in Health and Safety matters at our Units. Any training should be seen by management as an investment. All too often it is seen as an abstraction. The benefits of training relating to Health and Safety, are felt by any organisation by a reduction of costs relating to injury and sickness.

As I said earlier, we are making progress. However there are some issues that seem to drag on interminably. Last week I was carrying out a Mortar Base plate check of external areas at Capenhurst and met three Cheshire Constabulary patrol cars, the drivers of which all wore protective vests. I later came across some minutes of a Federation meeting held at Capenhurst in 1996 asking that our officers be provided with personal issue protective vests. Ten years on we are still waiting. We are still waiting for a decision regarding a less than lethal option to be issued to individual officers performing operational duties such as MBPs, in the form of an incapacitant spray. It is hoped that a decision will be forthcoming following the review being undertaken by Mr Burrows.

In his address to Conference last year our Chief Constable stated that the response to last year's Amber alert by members of the Constabulary and Police Staff was magnificent. All we ask is that the professional commitment of the officers of this Force is matched by professional care and consideration for their Health and Safety.

Terry Wroe
Health and Safety Leader