Promoting a sense of common purpose

Those working in health & safety today are faced with the challenge of developing a
sensible and proportionate health and safety culture and banishing rhetoric,explains the
British Safety Council,which organises the seminar programme for the Health & Safety
Events’ series of regional events

The Health & Safety South exhibition and conference,
taking place at Sandown Park, Esher, on the 28-29
February 2012, and the education seminar programme
within it is unlikely to feature emotive and sensationalist
language from the speakers and participants but rather a sense
of common purpose to get across all that is good about health
and safety.

The Sandown Park event provides a great opportunity for those
responsible for the management of health and safety to be
updated on key developments and see at first hand cutting edge
products and services. The Sandown Park event, which is free to
attend, has proved incredibly popular in previous years attracting
sizeable audiences from organisations in London, the South East
and further afield.

This event is without doubt the premier annual health and
safety exhibition and conference event held in London and the
South East. The exhibition and conference provide an excellent
avenue to help you gather those essential continuing professional
development credits which are critical to your membership of
CIEH, IOSH and the IIRSM.

This year we will be looking to use social media such as
twitter, blogs and facebook to share key themes emerging from
the various presentations and to help those attending to engage
more effectively, for example through questions, with the
speakers. As always the presentations will be made available to
those attending as soon after the event as possible.

The British Safety Council is proud to be the education
partner the fourth such occasion for the Sandown Park
exhibition and conference. Over those four years we have seen
the exhibition and conference audiences grow with health and
safety managers and practitioners seeing it as the ‘must attend’
event of the year.

Asked why the event had proved increasingly popular
Joscelyne Shaw, head of policy and influencing at the British
Safety Council, had the answer at her finger tips, “We know
from talking with our members and from the wider health and
safety world that they consider the pace to be fast moving. In the
last year we have seen major developments concerning health
and safety – with a major programme of law reform planned
flowing from the Löfstedt review; the introduction of cost
recovery for HSE enforcement activity; the reform of RIDDOR
reporting; and the voluntary register for health and safety
consultants – all set against a backdrop of tough economic
conditions. The seminar programme taking place at Sandown
Park offers those attending the opportunity to be brought right
up to date on developments concerning health, safety policy, law,
enforcement and management.”
Joscelyne will be introducing and chairing the education
seminar programme on the first day. Speakers include Dr Paul
Almond from the University of Reading, providing a health and
safety legal update, whose research surrounding regulatory myths
was cited fulsomely in the Löfstedt review. Others speakers
include Malcolm Tullett of risk and Safety Plus, a former senior
officer with the London Fire Brigade, who will be providing
practical advice on the management of the significant risks
associated with fire. Malcolm will as always challenge the
audience to think more broadly about the likely impact of other
changes underway including those concerning enforcement and
cost recovery.

The second day of the conference will be introduced and
chaired by Neal Stone, the British Safety Council’s director of
policy and communications. Speakers include Jane Saunders
from Selex Galileo, on the business benefits of occupational
health provision; Sarah Page, health and safety adviser at the
trade union Prospect – the trade union that represents among
others HSE inspectors; and Mark Tyler, the leading health and
safety lawyer and conference favourite, who will be covering the
latest developments concerning enforcement and reform of the
law. Neal will, in his introduction, give a resume of the key
themes coming out of his recent interview with Professor Ragnar
Löfstedt.