SIMPLC brings together all parts of the plastics and composites industries including trade organisations and unions in a bid to stimulate progress on accident and ill-health reduction by helping to embed a health and safety culture within businesses.
Composites UK, along with other participating trade associations and supporting organisations, has updated its action plan to help members achieve long-term improvements. It has invited members to pledge their support for the health and safety improvement targets set out in SIMPLC’s strategic direction statement.
Within the pledge, members are encouraged to implement a health and safety management system that is appropriate for their size of organisation and nature of business. To assist with this, built within the framework of the Composites UK website, is a health and safety management system (HSMS), which allows companies to perform a self-audit on the measures they have in place already and what they need to do to improve.
Helen Symonds, HR and H&S manager at Sigmatex said of the strategy: “I am delighted to pledge Sigmatex’s commitment to safety and to help build on the good progress we have made over recent years. Composites UK’s self-audit tool via the HSMS provides an excellent ‘health check’ of our business and has given us the framework to assess where our gaps lie and build these in to our safety strategy going forward. I have found the Site Safety template particularly useful and I am already working on customising this for our business. The Composites UK website has a fantastic, easy to read health and safety resource that we will continue to draw from going forward.”
Tufcot Engineering were one of the first Composites UK members to back the SIMPLC strategy. David Green, quality/H&S manager at Tufcot added: “Here at Tufcot we are very keen to support the SIMPLC strategy. The composites industry is growing and innovating into new materials and processes, nevertheless all companies are likely to face the same or similar H&S issues. We have seen from failings in other sectors how important it is to take an industry wide approach to these issues, not only to protect our workforces but also our reputations.”
Composites UK is continuing to accept pledges from members and work to support them with their health and safety audits. The HSMS can be found on the Association’s website (https://compositesuk.co.uk/health-safetymanagement-system). Basic access to the tool is open to all, members can login to utilise the self-audit tool.