Slips, Trips, and Falls on Your Site – Risk Assessment & Action for Your Business

As the facility or property manager for private commercial sites, you know only too well about the importance of preventing slips, trips, and falls during autumn and winter. Taking every step (excuse the pun) to introduce watertight safety policies, such as gritting, is always advisable.

In this blog, we focus on what can happen if you don’t take proper care to safeguard the outside areas of your site. We include a guide on what to look out for when doing your onsite risk assessment and detail our own comprehensive winter maintenance contract. We want you to feel complete confidence that you’ll avoid accidents, as well as expensive claims this cold season.

Slips, Trips, and Falls Statistics

People hurting themselves through avoidable accidents at work pose real risks to business. In fact, in 2018, 27.3 million work days were lost due to workplace injury and work-related illness. The costs to Britain for workplace self-reported injuries and ill health exceeded £16 billion in 2018-19.

In particular, thousands of people are sent to the hospital thanks to injuries from falling during winter. In fact, in the winter of 2014-2015, there were 2,919 admissions directly as a result of people slipping over in icy conditions. In one instance in October 2015, a prison guard was awarded half a million pounds in compensation after slipping on ice during patrol duty.

Listed as the most common cause of injury in the workplace, slips, trips, and falls are responsible for over 40% of non-fatal accidents at work. Of course, a bruised shin or twisted ankle isn’t such a big deal, but what about a permanent disability or even death? Falling from height makes up to 25% of fatal accidents in the working environment in the UK. The UK government has long been aware of the economic and personal costs of slips, trips, and falls and offers guidance on the correct procedures.

What’s the Difference Between Slips, Trips, and Falls?

By definition, a slip is to do with a lack of friction between the footwear and the surface a person walks on. During winter, ice is a major culprit for slipping over. Applying grit to affected areas is an easy way of preventing slips.

A trip, on the other hand, is when a person’s foot makes contact with an object on the ground or floor or a step, which knocks them off balance. Trips can be minimized by ensuring even surfaces throughout the working environment.

Despite what you might think, a fall isn’t just from a great height. It also includes falling from the same height as the ground. It generally involves a person losing their center of balance.

What Are the Legal Requirements to Prevent Slips, Trips, and Falls at Work?

Any HR or safety executive worth their salt knows there are many specific legal requirements about health and safety at work. These rules aren’t just for employees but for any external people who work on the premises, as well as visitors to the site.

Thanks to these stringent legislations, the UK has some of the lowest fatalities at work rates in Europe. According to the Health and Safety Executive Key Statistics and Figures, some 90% of UK companies regularly conduct risk assessments.

As an expert grounds care maintenance company, we make sure the exterior areas of your company adhere to all relevant safety laws, as below.

The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HSW Act) states that sufficient and suitable control measures must be in place to reduce the risk of slips, trips, and falls to the lowest rate possible.

Under the HSW Act 1974, employees must never be required to endanger themselves or others, should cooperate with their employers, and should use safety equipment provided by their employer.

Manufacturers and suppliers have a duty to ensure their products are safe, with a supply of adequate information of how to use the products.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 details the need for employers to assess risks (including slips, trips, and falls) and communicate those risks. Employers also have an obligation to investigate any incident that occurs.

Employees have a duty to report potential danger or shortcomings they find in the organization of health and safety.

The Workplace Health Safety and Welfare Regulations 1992 also contain further information about flooring and traffic flow and how they should be kept even, clean, and clear at all times.

The ‘Working at Height Regulations 2005’ stipulates that anyone working from height (such as a ladder or stepladder) must properly plan to do so. That includes ensuring the surfaces that you work on are even and stable.

How We Can Help Your Business This Winter with External Risk Assessment

We have a fully comprehensive winter risk management with full liability protection and comprehensive insurance. Our professional gritting service minimizes all the associated risks of wintertime, such as snow clearance, ice management, and gritting, which improves the safety of your business while mitigating claims should they arise.

Our live reporting and scheduling system offers complete efficiency and ease for our customers. With minute-to-minute reporting on our services, you get a risk assessment tool at your fingertips, because we include inspection reports without you even asking.

With our grounds maintenance service, we investigate the entire outside area of your property, thoroughly. From waste clearance and litter picking to leaf removal, from pothole fixing to uneven surfaces, we aim to keep your site clear and risk-free. We cover a number of different sectors and can provide case studies for many happy customers.

We spend considerable time applying thorough control measures to places of work. That includes a slip assessment tool and falls risk assessment, with careful monitoring of weather conditions. Simple attention to detail, from securing trailing cables or removing spills, all help to minimize slip potential.

We work together with you for all your external grounds risk assessment needs.

That might include things like:

• Identification of Hazards
• Checking previous accident records
• Establishing which groups of people could potentially come to harm
• Establishing how might those people come to harm
• Get feedback from employees
• Consider visitors to your workplace, where will they be and what will they be doing
• Evaluate Risks and Take Precautions
• Decide what to do about the hazards you have identified
• Look at what risk management you already have in place and assess if you can improve on that
• Develop a strategy to work around risks e.g. cleaners come out of hours, gritting staircases
• Adhering to health and safety risk assessments with every change of design to the workplace
• Ensuring areas are well
• Using signage for potential danger e.g. wet floor
• Remove waste regularly to ensure there is no health and safety or trip hazard
• Making sure Fire exits are completely clear at all times
• Dealing with ice and snow as well as slippery leaves during autumn and winter

Record All Findings in a Risk Register

The law requires you to demonstrate how you have identified and implemented your risk assessments. Recording this in a legible way means you’re covered if someone should still have a slip, trip, or fall at work. If you can show that you have done everything within reason to prevent slips from happening, you are doing your job correctly and are mitigating any insurance claims.