Poor standards and dangerous practices were found at nearly half the repair, maintenance & improvement building sites visited nationwide during a month long clampdown in September.

The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) visited 2,607 sites. Inspectors found basic safety standards were not being met on 1,105 of them. On 644, practices were so poor that enforcement action was necessary to protect workers – with 539 prohibition notices served ordering dangerous activities to stop immediately and 414 improvement notices issued requiring standards to improve.

The most common problems involved activities at height, exposure to harmful dust and inadequate welfare facilities.

Heather Bryant, HSE’s Chief Inspector of Construction, says: “It is disappointing to find a significant number of sites falling below acceptable health & safety standards, where our inspectors encountered poor practice. This often went hand-in-hand with a lack of understanding.

“Through initiatives like this we are able to tackle underlying issues before they become established and we will continue to work with the industry in an effort to drive up standards.

“However, those who recklessly endanger the health and lives of their workforce can expect to face tough consequences.”

For more about the initiative, including examples of good and bad practice discovered by HSE Inspectors during the campaign, see the HSE online Safersites pages by clicking here.