Health and Safety

ASLEF organises in a highly regulated, safety critical industry. All our Members have to be intensively trained to very high standards. Safety therefore is paramount, both for the protection of the public and of our Members.

Since the privatisation of the railway industry, ASLEF is concerned that the fragmented nature of the industry has led to safety being compromised. The profit motive has lead to a reduction in driver training, for example. As a result of this reduction ASLEF is formulating a best practice driver training package that individual TOCs and FOCs will have to agree to or they will be in dispute with ASLEF. Another example is a reduction in on-going training in the form of safety briefing days. Six days per year were recommended in the Hidden report following the Clapham crash. ASLEF believes that quality, classroom based safety briefings are the most effective method of updating Drivers and other safety critical staff.

The lives of ASLEF members that have been lost in such tragedies as Paddington and Ufton Nervet and the lost lives of members of public in the avoidable accidents such as Hatfield and Potters Bar are lost because of the failings of the rail industry and not because of the actions or inactions of ASLEF members. These disasters highlight the need for a safety agenda that listens to the people and the workers who operate and use the systems because they are the in the best position to identify the problems.

We therefore call for a publicly owned, publicly accountable national railway, and London Underground.

Resources from the TUC

The TUC has put together a number of leaflets, guides and forms to help health and safety reps do what they do best - keep the workplace safe and healthy.

ORR Good Practice guidelines on managing fatigue

The ORR have published guidance on good practice in managing fatigue associated with work in the rail industry.

After a wide-ranging industry consultation, they are publishing the guidance to give advice on good practice in fatigue management.

This rail industry-specific guidance builds on the more general guidance applicable to all industries. The ORR guidance advocates a proportionate approach to fatigue, with simple controls where risks are low, but a more comprehensive ‘fatigue risk management’ system (FRMS) approach where risks from fatigue are greater, to help reduce the risk of fatigue-based errors.

For more information on this, and for the ORR approach to health and safety regulation of the rail industry more generally, please visit the ORR website.

ORR promote Stress Awareness

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR), as part of their occupational health programme for 2010-14, is working to promote wider adoption of an organisational, preventive approach to stress management by rail companies.

Stress has been identified as a key issue of concern by both by rail employers and trade unions. The TUC biennial survey of safety representatives in 2010 identified stress as the top health concern in the transport sector.

As a follow up to the ORR’s focus on health at Workers' Memorial Day in April 2011, ORR would like to encourage employees' representatives to get involved in thinking about prevention of work related stress in your workplace.

As a starting point, they are suggesting that safety representatives complete the online exercises on HSE's website to help better understand your role in applying the HSE management standards approach.

Five short exercises take you through the signs and symptoms of stress and ask what you can do as workforce representatives to help reduce and prevent stress. The ORR anticipate that completion of the on-line exercises may take about an hour, in some cases less. Once you’ve completed the exercises, answers can be saved and printed in PDF form and used as basis for discussion at joint safety committee meetings with your employers.

ORR guidance on Level Crossings

ORR has today published its revised guidance on level crossings - Level Crossings: A guide for managers, designers and operators. It can be downloaded here

It updates the earlier guidance, Railway Safety Principles and Guidance, Part 2, Section E (RSPG2E) Guidance on level crossings (first published in 1996) to reflect recent developments in good practice, technology and industry standards and to take account of changes in the law and recommendations from the Rail Accident and Investigation Branch. It also incorporates the previously separate guidance on the level crossing order making process which is managed by ORR.

The Case for Health and Safety (TUC)

The TUC have put together a booklet entitled 'The case for Health and Safety' to highlight that there is still a need to be vigilant over health and safety issues even though the media seem to ridicule 'elf and safety' in the media. With over 20,000 people dying because of their work last year, health and safety still needs to be at the top ofour agenda. The TUC booklet can be downloaded from their website

RSSB Annual Safety Performance Report

RSSB's Annual Safety Performance Report (ASPR) examines the range of risk experienced by passengers, the railway workforce and members of the public, before considering areas that affect us all: train accidents, personal security, level crossings and stations.

The below document details the key facts and figures from the report. The full report can be viewed on the RSSB website at the following address:

ASPR 2011 Key Facts and Figures

TUC Safety Reps Survey 2010

The eighth TUC survey of Safety Reps was designed to provide the TUC and individual unions with information about who safety reps are, and what their experiences and needs are. The TUC produced this survey so that they can do more to help Safety Reps, and so that Safety Reps' views and experiences are better reflected in public policy debates and the work of the Health and Safety Executive. The report of the survey, which is taken every two years, can be found here

HSE European Week - Resources for Safety Reps

The 2009 European Health and Safety Week focused on risk assessment for a second year. The HSE provided a number of pages on their website that could be of use to Health and Safety reps even though it was produced for the 2009 health and safety week. These are at:

TPWS

The RSSB has made available through their website information on the TPWS Strategy with an brief overview, board papers and slide presentations.

Back pain in the workplace - Better Backs Campaign

The Better Backs Campaign by the HSE finished on 31 March 2008. It has run over the last three years and resulted in an increasing awareness of how to tackle back pain and upper limb disorder at work.

HSE now wants to learn from the evaluation of the work they have done in this period.

In the meantime HSE is focussing on the prevention of Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSD).

A dedicated page for Upper Limb Disorders (ULDs) is currently under construction.

OPSWEB

OPSWEB is the website of the rail industry's Operations Focus Group (OFG), the industry's body charged with leading the drive to reduce operational risk on the UK rail network.

OPSWEB is the successor to SPADWEB which was targeted at SPAD risk. The site has been broadened to cover the wider range of operational risk, providing more information on other issues, and not those solely connected with SPADS.

You will find descriptions of what particular operation risks are, some of the reasons why they occur and what the rail industry is doing to prevent them here.

Fatigue and Risk Index now available

The HSE Research Report Series RR446 - The development of a fatigue/risk index for shiftworkers is now available.

This report describes the work carried out to revise and update the HSE Fatigue Index (FI). Extensive changes have been made to the previous version, incorporating recent information relating to a variety of issues including cumulative fatigue, time of day, shift length, the effect of breaks and the recovery from a sequence of shifts. In addition, a review has been carried out of trends in risk related to shift work, and this has enabled the final version to incorporate two separate indices, one related to fatigue (the Fatigue Index) and the other to risk (the Risk Index). While the two indices are similar in many respects they diverge in others. The main differences are due to the different trends with respect to time of day in fatigue and risk. The index has been implemented in the form of a spreadsheet, the design of which has incorporated feedback from users of the previous index.