Yellow Wellies launch free digital tool to boost health & safety on farms

While agriculture employs just 1% of the UK’s workforce, it’s responsible for 18% of all deaths in the workplace.

According to research carried out by the Farm Safety Foundation involving 900 farmers across Britain, 91% agree that farming is dangerous and most feel a personal responsibility to do something about it, with younger farmers especially keen to take action.

Having a health and safety (H&S) policy is vital for all farms, and a written policy is a legal requirement for businesses with over five employees. Moreover, key assurance schemes like Red Tractor require an active H&S policy to be in place regardless of farm size.

Wayne Owen, from the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) Agricultural Sector Team, explained: “The law says that every business, including farmers, must have a policy for managing health and safety.

“A health and safety policy sets out your general approach to health and safety. It explains how you, as an employer, will manage health and safety in your business. It should clearly say who does what, when and how.”

While the benefits of having a H&S policy are many, negative attitudes to the process still prevent farmers from having one, which is what the Farm Safety Foundation’s new tool is here to address.

Charity manager Stephanie Berkeley believes the key component in adopting good health and safety culture is “buy-in”.

“Agriculture isn’t like other industries in that it can present hazards to people not actively involved in the industry, such as children and family members living on the farm and visitors. Hazards can also exist for vets, delivery workers and even emergency medical services personnel, as they provide assistance and care to victims of farm incidents,” she pointed out.

The Farm Safety Foundation’s new tool aims to simplify the process of creating a H&S policy by giving farmers a series of simple questions to work through. There are also lots of useful links on the site providing further information, broken down into different farming categories.

Ms Berkeley added: “Each and every farm worker thinking about what could happen to their work colleagues, visitors or family members on the farm, what could cause it and how serious it could be, is something we should all buy into. It’s a matter of common sense… but it is not common practice.

“Rather than providing a templated policy that the farmer doesn’t even have to read before signing it and that will sit on a shelf in the farm office gathering dust, we want to walk the farmer through a simple online process.

“We’re making it easier for farmers to build a policy for their particular farm, that they can share with workers, reminding them why safety matters,” she concluded.

“A valuable tool for farms of all sizes”

To gather content for the digital tool, the Farm Safety Foundation worked with Casey Barker, a health and safety expert from NFU Mutual Risk Management Services, and engaged Warwickshire-based design consultancy Exhibit Interactive to create the user interface.

Joe Ashton, MD of Exhibit Interactive, commented: “We have worked with Stephanie and the team for several years now to create various cutting-edge approaches to improving farm safety, notably their Virtual Reality farm safety training sessions.

“We were delighted to support them with this project as it seems like such a valuable tool for farms of all sizes,” he added.

Having gone through extensive testing by health and safety experts, the HSE and Red Tractor, the tool is now available free of charge on the yellowwellies.org website.

Christine Tacon, chair of Red Tractor, highlighted that having an active H&S policy is critical to encouraging farm owners to think about potential risks and how to manage them.

“This tool allows members to ensure their policy accurately reflects their farm make-up and activities, and the format allows those responsible to make amends as their business changes and grows. The format also supports communication, understanding and adoption of practices, to ensure on-site health and safety is available to all,” she said.

“Red Tractor are the largest assurance scheme in British agriculture, and we’re pleased to be able to direct our members to these new Farm Safety Foundation resources.”

To access the Farm Safety Foundation’s Build Your Own Health & Safety Policy visit the Yellow Wellies website or click here.