Wolverhampton health and safety bosses endorse plan for protecting workers and public

The 2022-23 service report was presented to members by environment chief councillor Steve Evans, who said a budget of £653,000 had been set aside for the environmental health service – of which £145,000 would be spent on health and safety.

However, the announcement – made at this week’s meeting of the council’s regulatory committee – prompted concern from opposition councillor Wendy Dalton, who questioned if this was adequate provision.

“I am concerned that the council may not have sufficient resources allocated to health and safety,” she said.

“Health and safety is often complained about due to over judicious application of rules, but the fact remains that keeping residents safe, be it at football matches or tattoo parlours, is of paramount importance and I hope that the council is not scrimping in this area.”

Councillor Evans, cabinet member for city environment and climate change, responded: “We have a statutory obligation to ensure we have an adequate team in place, and that £145,000 will be dedicated to supporting the health and safety service plan.

“Based on historical data and evidence, yes, I do think it’s an adequate requirement. Would we like more? Of course we would – we’d like to be able to visit every single business in the city. But I’m afraid that isn’t logistically possible, even if we had the fiscal resources to do it.

“In reality, we do focus on priorities that are relative to people’s concerns and what we believe are the health and safety risks today. The £145,000 is part of an overall budget.

“The officers do a fantastic job in producing this report and making sure the local authority has in place a very good framework for ensuring that health and safety within the workplace is focused on the priorities that are needed for the next 12 months,” he added.

“One of the things that we want to focus on is electrical safety in hospitality settings. I think people will appreciate that outdoor settings have naturally become used more and are more in focus.

“So we do need to carry out more proactive checks, and of course we will be doing that when we carry out our routine food inspections.

“We would also like to look at gas safety in commercial catering premises, and again we will always seek to work in partnership with businesses to help raise awareness of any problems and risks. We must ensure that there isn’t any faulty equipment and that there is proper ventilation.

“Healthcare and provisions for delivery drivers is another issue. We live in a different world to the one we did two or three years ago, and there has been a huge increase in the number of delivery drivers. We must ensure that there are adequate toilet, handwashing and rest facilities available,” he said.

“We’ve always said that we want to focus on workplace stress and mental health at work. This is really important and it’s one that we would like to continue with in this year’s service plan.

“And without doubt, the team do support each other, and should we need to refocus and ensure that we’ve got adequate resources to react or be proactive in any other area, then that team is more than capable of doing so and has done so on many occasions in the past,” councillor Evans told the committee.

The Health and Safety Statutory Plan for 2022-23 can be accessed at bit.ly/3OgnYUe