Promoting a sense of common purpose

Those working in health & safety today are faced with the challenge of developing a sensible and proportionate health and safety culture and banishing rhetoric,explains the British Safety Council,which organises the seminar programme for the Health & Safety Events' series of regional events

The Health & Safety South exhibition and conference, taking place at Sandown Park, Esher, on the 28-29 February 2012, and the education seminar programme within it is unlikely to feature emotive and sensationalist language from the speakers and participants but rather a sense of common purpose to get across all that is good about health and safety.

The Sandown Park event provides a great opportunity for those responsible for the management of health and safety to be updated on key developments and see at first hand cutting edge products and services. The Sandown Park event, which is free to attend, has proved incredibly popular in previous years attracting sizeable audiences from organisations in London, the South East and further afield.

This event is without doubt the premier annual health and safety exhibition and conference event held in London and the South East. The exhibition and conference provide an excellent avenue to help you gather those essential continuing professional development credits which are critical to your membership of CIEH, IOSH and the IIRSM.

This year we will be looking to use social media such as twitter, blogs and facebook to share key themes emerging from the various presentations and to help those attending to engage more effectively, for example through questions, with the speakers. As always the presentations will be made available to those attending as soon after the event as possible.

The British Safety Council is proud to be the education partner the fourth such occasion for the Sandown Park exhibition and conference. Over those four years we have seen the exhibition and conference audiences grow with health and safety managers and practitioners seeing it as the 'must attend' event of the year.

Asked why the event had proved increasingly popular Joscelyne Shaw, head of policy and influencing at the British Safety Council, had the answer at her finger tips, "We know from talking with our members and from the wider health and safety world that they consider the pace to be fast moving. In the last year we have seen major developments concerning health and safety - with a major programme of law reform planned flowing from the Löfstedt review; the introduction of cost recovery for HSE enforcement activity; the reform of RIDDOR reporting; and the voluntary register for health and safety consultants - all set against a backdrop of tough economic conditions. The seminar programme taking place at Sandown Park offers those attending the opportunity to be brought right up to date on developments concerning health, safety policy, law, enforcement and management." Joscelyne will be introducing and chairing the education seminar programme on the first day. Speakers include Dr Paul Almond from the University of Reading, providing a health and safety legal update, whose research surrounding regulatory myths was cited fulsomely in the Löfstedt review. Others speakers include Malcolm Tullett of risk and Safety Plus, a former senior officer with the London Fire Brigade, who will be providing practical advice on the management of the significant risks associated with fire. Malcolm will as always challenge the audience to think more broadly about the likely impact of other changes underway including those concerning enforcement and cost recovery.

The second day of the conference will be introduced and chaired by Neal Stone, the British Safety Council's director of policy and communications. Speakers include Jane Saunders from Selex Galileo, on the business benefits of occupational health provision; Sarah Page, health and safety adviser at the trade union Prospect - the trade union that represents among others HSE inspectors; and Mark Tyler, the leading health and safety lawyer and conference favourite, who will be covering the latest developments concerning enforcement and reform of the law. Neal will, in his introduction, give a resume of the key themes coming out of his recent interview with Professor Ragnar Löfstedt.