A message from the Chief Executive, Mineral Products Association, Jon Prichard

Marked Increase in Employee fatalities 2023 – Time for Action

As many of you will be aware, for a period of over four years (between 2018 and 2021) MPA Members managed to operate successfully without a direct employee or contractor fatality. Unfortunately, 2022 saw a reversal of this positive trend with two fatalities reported, both involving large goods vehicle drivers.

It is with much regret that I must now inform you all that in the year to date, we are aware of three further fatalities amongst our membership family and another in a closely related company.

From my own perspective, and I am sure for all of you, these tragedies just serve to remind me of the importance of putting health safety and wellbeing first, in everything that we do; because these types of incidents can happen to any of us, and we have to strive to eliminate the factors that cause them from our industry.

Members will be aware of the MPA’s ‘Vision Zero – everyone home safe and well every day’. At the core of Vision Zero is our shared commitment to relentlessly address the dominant high-risk hazards and strive to eradicate the key causes of the most serious incidents from our industry … ’The Fatal 6’.

MPA, through the good work of its members and with the support of our partners, has produced many excellent Health Safety and Wellbeing resources that can be sourced via Safequarry. In particular I would like to point you all to the Vision Zero resources, and especially the 6 values which underpin Vision Zero, as I believe that if truly embedded in member organisations, lived and breathed by leadership, communicated effectively to workers, then such an approach can help to make a significant impact in terms of eliminating the most serious incidents.

Given the trends that we currently see emerging and our ongoing shared commitment to ‘Vision Zero’, then I feel it is relevant to highlight two values in particular:

• Engaged Visible and Consistent Leadership – because as we all know it is leadership, right from the top through every layer of management, that makes the ultimate difference to the way people behave.
• Empowerment – every worker has the right to stop any job if they feel that it is unsafe or unhealthy to continue. You will recall that we saw some great examples of this empowered approach being brought to life in the 2022 Health and Safety Awards (link).

I would like to ask you all, whether a larger or a smaller business, and whatever point you are at in your individual health and safety journey, to do something ‘visibly different’ during the month of June, to emphasise your commitment to health safety and wellbeing and its status as the number one priority for your organisation, your supply chains, and across all your products. Perhaps this could be a safety stand-down, or something around stopping the job if people feel unsafe; but in any case, I would ask you to really reinforce Vision Zero and its underpinning values.

For my part, you have my commitment as MPA Chief Executive, that we will continue to put health and safety first and to work tirelessly to support all our members, large or small, as we seek to eliminate the causes of ‘The Fatal 6’.