Private sector Health and Safety jobs to increase

Due to planned cuts to the Government's health and safety watchdog, it is predicted that there will be a significant increase by private sector companies employing in-house health and safety technicians. Similarly there are likely to be more national positions for health and safety related jobs as companies further outsource these responsibilities to skilled contractors.

Although there are industry wide concerns, particularly regarding the state of construction, due to the foreseen reduction in work place inspections by the Health and Safety Executive. It has been claimed this will serve to boost numbers of available health and safety jobs.

There is a lot of value to having businesses that encourage and actively follow safe working practises, both in the economic sense and the more humane sense. Serious accidents within the work place or bereavements resulting from such avoidable accidents are responsible for a considerable number of lost hours of productivity according to leading researchers.

The Bureau of Labour Statistics has predicted a 14% increase in the demand for health and safety technicians, totalling a figure over 12,000 within the United Kingdom, set to happen by 2018.

Authoritative sources have said that bodies within the industry will be asked to make sure that their members self regulate, whilst HSE inspectors would concentrate on particularly high risk sites and scenarios.

This all comes as HSE is set to see a 35% cut in their budget and that employers will no longer be facing compulsory health and safety inspections.

Many unions are pointing out that the work place is becoming ever increasingly dangerous due to these actions. The construction industry has seen a notable 15% increase in fatalities during the past year, which comes as UCATT announced 21 separate memorial services due to work place deaths in the month of April alone. In response, acting general secretary George Guy of UCATT is quoted as saying "The Conservative-led government's financial attacks on the HSE will make workplaces more dangerous and will lead to increased deaths and injuries of workers in future."

This article was written by freelance journalist Gemma Simms on behalf of Acre Resources. Acre Resources are an ethical and socially responsible health and safety recruitment company based in the UK. They provide a range of national and international health and safety jobs.