Ahead of its Health and Safety Awards in May, the National House Building Council (NHBC) is putting the spotlight on some of the leading, and easiest to fix, health and safety risks on building sites.

According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), during 2016/17, around 1,200 injuries on building sites were due to slips, trips or falls. The HSE also estimates that there are an estimated 2.3 million working days lost each year in construction between 2014/15 and 2016/17 due to workplace injury (17%) and work-related illness (83%).

Here are, according to the NHBC, some of the most frequent reported items in the final quarter of 2017:

  • Workers working on scaffold with no guardrails in place
  • No fall protection on open stairwells
  • Access routes blocked with site materials
  • No eye protection being worn when using a paslode nail gun
  • No respiratory protection being worn when using a disc cutter or saw
  • No pedestrian/traffic segregation in place, with operatives and members of the public walking in the road with the site traffic
  • Scaffold not being erected correctly in accordance with TG 20.13.

Stephen Ashworth, Health & Safety Services Manager at the NHBC, said: “Over recent years, we have seen big improvements with regards to safety on-site and the number of injuries to construction workers has reduced.

“Here at the NHBC, we’ve seen the importance given to health and safety on housebuilding sites across the UK, with record levels of entries for the NHBC Health and Safety Awards and higher levels of take up for our health and safety services.

“One way to avoid injuries on house-building sites it to make sure a safe work environment is provided, and taking a proactive approach to safety on-site helps keep workers safe.”

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