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News release

19 May 2010 - NR 25/10

Accreditation can help build trust, says health and safety leader

A leading professional body has been lobbying hard for health and safety consultants to be subject to a formal programme of accreditation.

That’s the message John Holden, president of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) will give to fellow professionals and distinguished guests, including politicians, at a special IOSH lunch to be held at the House of Lords, tomorrow (Thursday 20 May).

The IOSH leader will claim that accreditation of health and safety professionals will help to make health and safety more trusted and more respected. It will also strike a major blow in the fight to quash the silly myths that have come to surround health and safety.

Challenging IOSH members to “not get mad but get even – even more professional than we’ve ever been before”, John will tell the invited audience how IOSH (the world’s largest health and safety body) has been encouraged by the cross-party political support it has gained on the question of accreditation, including its own work, in partnership with other industry leaders, to progress a pilot accreditation scheme for all health and safety professionals.

John will say: “The official guidance to the law tells businesses they must get a ‘competent assistant… at an appropriate level’ to help them with their health and safety. Yet employers and recruiters are left to guess what ‘competence’ actually means. Shockingly, at the moment, anyone can claim to be a health and safety ‘adviser’, without any qualifications or experience.”

He will add: “This possible playground for poor advice is potentially very threatening to workers, whose lives and long term health can be put at risk; to businesses, in terms of wasted time and money; and to people whose image of health and safety is formed by negative media coverage of some poor decisions dressed up as ‘health and safety.”

John will also call for more help to be offered to workers with health problems to help them either stay at or return to work: “This is an area where the modern health and safety professional can, I believe, make a vital contribution – that of linking the expertise of the health professionals with the realities of the workplace.

“Good work is not only good for health, it’s also good for productivity and profitability and if we’re to pull out of this present economic crisis, workplace health and safety is going to need to play a strong part,” he will argue.

• A portrait photograph of John Holden is available on request – please see below for Media Enquiries
• The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has calculated that 34 million working days were lost last year through work-related ill-health and injury (13 million days were lost through stress)
• The cost to employers of injury and ill-health has been put at between £3.9 and £7.8 billion a year. The country’s annual sick pay bill (for ill health and injury) comes to £1.27 billion (HSE)
• The annual cost of ill-health and injury to the economy is estimated to be between £13.1 and £22.2 billion.

- Ends -

Notes for editors:

IOSH is the Chartered body for health and safety professionals. With more than 40,000 members in 85 countries, we’re the world’s biggest professional health and safety organisation.

We set standards, and support, develop and connect our members with resources, guidance, events and training. We’re the voice of the profession, and campaign on issues that affect millions of working people.

IOSH was founded in 1945 and is a registered charity with international NGO status.