Freedom of Information (FoI) request highlights the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) found serious safety concerns at 43% of the waste sites it visited.
HSE data, recently obtained by ZoneSafe via a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, reveals that the HSE conducted 610 inspections of waste and recycling sites between October 2022 and 20 March 2023, 20% more than the planned 500 visits.
Site visits were conducted as part of the Waste and Recycling Sector Workplan 2022-2023, which was implemented in 2022 in response to HSE concerns about poor health and safety standards in the sector.
The top two priorities were identified as reducing the number of people being struck by moving vehicles and the number of workers being caught in moving machinery.
The FoI data revealed a material breach rate of 43%, which means around 260 of the 610 sites visited contravened current health and safety rules.
The latest HSE figures show there was one worker death reported in 2021/22, however over the previous five-year period, (2017/18-2021/22), 27 workers lost their lives with 10 of these due to being struck by a moving vehicle.
