Western Group Environmental Health Service - Derry City Council

HEALTH AND SAFETY .Visitor attractions involving animalsWestern Group has been involved in the past year in a joint partnership with HSENI considering public health Incidents.New guidance on "Preventing or controlling ill health from animal contacts at visitor attractions has been issued. Thisguidance was aimed at owners and managers of visitor attractions who have legal duties under health and safetylegislation as "duty holders" and describes the measures duty holders should take to protect visitorsWestern Group staff worked in partnership with HSENI over the past year to organise two information seminars on therevised guidance. One seminar was aimed at industry stakeholders and the other at EHOs and at HSENI Inspectors. These proved very successful withover 150 participants attending.Safe MaintenanceWithin the joint strategy between HSENI and local government launched in February 2011, Safe Maintenance was identified as a priority area forattention from both agencies during 2011-2012. Maintenance was selected as particularly important because one third of all workplace fatalities inNorthern Ireland in 2009-10 were related to maintenance as were a large number of the major and 3-day reportable accidents.Maintenance work can be particularly hazardous as it can often involve dangerous activities such as working at heights, workingwith electricity and with dangerous equipment. It is often done on an ad hoc basis without a proper risk assessment having beencarried out, and a significant amount of maintenance work is undertaken by contractors who are not familiar with the workplace.Training events were organised for officers on 1 st and 10 th June 2011 in relation to the Safe Maintenance campaign. As part of thisjoint maintenance campaign, Environmental Health Officers from Western Group councils, and beyond, ensured that 50% ofnormal inspection/investigation activities raised the issue of maintenance safety and any relevant maintenance topic area(asbestos/work at heights/isolation). It is hoped, in these times of economic hardship, that employers will realise that good safemaintenance regimes are a worthwhile investment in health and safety and business terms. Without regular maintenance, thingscan go badly wrong causing death or serious injury.20