Following on from last week's leader in which I shared the sad story of a tradesman who met his demise as a result of a lapse in safe working procedures, I'm delighted to see that the UK'S safest house builders have been honoured by the NHBC, which has announced the winners of the first round of its annual Health & Safety Awards; the UK's only awards scheme to honour the safest home builders.

Frighteningly, every year several thousand construction workers are injured while working on a building site. Through effective management of working areas and access routes many of these injuries could be avoided, whilst also helping to reduce the number of working days lost to a business. The matter of health, safety and environment continues to be one of the top priorities in housebuilding and construction.

NHBC's role is to support the industry in maintaining and improving the build quality of new homes for homebuyers, whilst providing the benefit of its 10-year Buildmark warranty protection, when required. The NHBC Health & Safety Awards, now in their seventh year, are designed to recognise and reward the very best in health & safety, and are also helping to drive up safety standards in the industry by showcasing and sharing best practice.

A total of 56 site managers have been awarded Commended status for their sites and will now go on to compete for the Highly Commended and National titles, which will be announced at a gala event next month. All of the competing sites have been visited by NHBC Health & Safety advisors and were scored against the highly stringent health & safety standards set for the competition.

Stephen Ashworth, NHBC health and safety services manager, says that in 2017 there was a record number of entries into the Awards programme and the shortlist of finalists was "outstanding." 

That delights me and I really hope that awards programmes such as these, soon spread throughout the KBB industry. I spend my life writing about the quality of items produced by this industry and occasionally how they've been manufactured to be 'easy to fit'. Anything that avoids being difficult to fit or transport is going to make life easier for those tasked with the job, and with it their safety at work, so the more often I come across that term, the better.

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Yours,

Jan Hobbs