HSE shelves Load Safety publicity plans as cash cuts cause changes in priorities

Load Safety is the latest HSE initiative to feel the squeeze of the Government's public sector spending cuts, with a decision by officials not to proceed with a publicity drive on the safe loading and unloading of vehicles.

The Load Safety initiative itself will continue, however, with advice available through the HSE's website (external website) and intermediaries, as well as spot checks of vehicles by staff from the Vehicle Operator Services Agency (VOSA). The HSE believes that, even without the publicity drive, the initiative is sufficiently embedded for the industry to take it forward and reach and influence hauliers and their drivers.

The HSE calculates that unsafe loads on vehicles and vans injure more than 1,200 people per year. A shift in a load may:

• render a vehicle unstable and at risk of overturning;
• endanger workers unloading the vehicle; and
• cause materials to fall from a vehicle, placing other road users at risk and disrupting traffic.

Launching the initiative in January 2010 with a nine-week publicity drive, the HSE mailed hauliers and transport managers with guidance and tips, and ran radio and trade-press adverts inviting workers to visit the Load Safety website for information. The HSE had intended to follow this up with more targeted publicity in autumn 2010, aimed particularly at smaller companies. A posting on the HSE's website (external website) on 21 March 2011, however, confirmed that "changes in HSE priorities mean this will not now happen".

An HSE spokesperson told HSB that the decision was taken in autumn 2010 before the Government announced it was cutting its funding of the HSE by 35% over four years from April 2011. It should be noted, however, that the HSE was cutting back on communications expenditure well before the announcement and that the minutes (PDF format, 53K) (external website) of the HSE's tripartite Road Distribution Action Group (RDAG) meeting for November 2010 state: "The cut in HSE's communication budget has meant that there will be no publicity for the Safe Loads campaign." The minutes also record that the group's chair - the HSE's Andy Freeman - "recognised the concerns raised by the group with regard [to] the impact of the impending cuts. However, tough choices will have to be made and RDAG will have to adapt accordingly."

The HSE advises that it "cannot say how much money would have been saved [from cancelling the second publicity phases] as no costings were ever finalised as continuing the campaign was never rubber stamped". The total cost of the Load Safety campaign publicity in 2009 and 2010, however, was £378,616; this covers the likes of advertisements and mailshots but not the initiative as a whole (it excludes, for example, the running of the website).

HSE optimistic about uptake

The HSE official in charge of the Load Safety initiative, Peter Lennon, told HSB the HSE believed the website had proved "very effective" in reaching companies, including smaller enterprises, and vehicle drivers, and had received 16,000 hits in its first months of operation. The website offers advice on what can go wrong, as well as on how to secure loads and plan load handling.

The HSE is continuing to work with intermediaries to publicise the initiative, particularly through RDAG and with companies such as Wincanton. Lennon advises that several industry groups, including the Chemical Business Association, are also producing their own guidance. The RDAG meeting heard that the Freight Transport Association and the Road Haulage Association are working to raise standards of load stability and security through their memberships "and are aware that there is an industry-identified need to prepare more pragmatic advice for general hauliers to supplement the Department for Transport code of practice (PDF format, 2.28MB) (external website)". The Health and Safety Laboratory told the meeting that it had, in conjunction with Corus (now Tata Steel Europe), produced industry guidance and that "this and the work undertaken with the Paper and Board Industry Advisory Committee [see box] might be helpful to anyone considering producing further guidance."

The HSL is training VOSA inspectors as part of a nationwide roll-out of random roadside checks of vehicles. At the start of the initiative, the HSE and VOSA carried out eight days of checks throughout northwest England. Previous spot checks carried out in April 2008 found almost 80% of loads were insufficiently restrained. Roadside checks, says Lennon, are a good way of getting information across, with the word quickly spreading through the industry.