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Melanie Johnson MPRoSPA National Home Safety Congress |
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I'm delighted to be here and meet design experts and practitioners in home safety. Sadly, when it comes to the main causes of accidents, injuries and deaths, there really is 'no place like home'. 76 people are killed in accidents in the home every week. And nearly three million people are injured in a home accident every year. So the theme of this congress - Safety by Design, designing, building and adapting homes for safety - is crucial, if we are to reduce this shocking tally of deaths and injuries. We need to build safer homes, with safer products. And to raise awareness so that people take action to reduce the risk of accidents. As Consumer Minister, this is a priority for me - as it was for my predecessor Kim Howells. Above all, we need to work together to tackle these issues - with all of you, home safety, accident prevention, fire and health officers, trading standards, architects, safety product manufacturers, and community practitioners. Today I'd like to look at some of the areas where we are working with you to make the home a safer place. Modernisation Fund As part of the Government's Modernisation Fund set up to support innovative approaches to service delivery, my Department is providing £1m to help deliver new initiatives in home safety this year. A significant proportion of the money - £400,000 - has been allocated to RoSPA and The Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT), the 2 national safety charities. RoSPA is using the money on diverse projects such as working with teachers on developing safety education for school children. CAPT funding will provide valuable resources on the dangers of burns and scalds - which, at present, result in 55 toddlers going to hospital every day. This will form a major focus for Child Safety Week in June next year. So we are supporting activity at the national level. But we also need to work at a local level to help people improve safety in individual communities. That's why we're funding 12 home accident prevention projects across the UK -managed by RoSPA We are targeting Modernisation Fund money to meet particular problems or to pump-prime activities being carried forward by other agencies. In one project, the Northern Ireland office of CAPT are developing a Home Safety Check scheme in the Armagh and Dungannon areas targeting children under 5 in low income families. A minimum of 200 households will benefit. In another, the Wiltshire Physical Activity Group is taking forward a range of activities to reduce the risks of people falling. Each year nearly 1,000 people fall to their deaths on their own stairs. This project aims to reduce such accidents in Wiltshire by reducing the dangers in the home and by providing appropriate physical activity for older people to increase their mobility. Other projects include an interactive education centre aimed at children between 6 and 11, financed in partnership with local organisations in Peterborough covering all safety hazards. This new facility is expected to benefit over 10,000 local children. P> And finally, a low cost safety equipment scheme which should help 1,000 low income families with children under 5 in West Lothian. I'm very grateful to RoSPA for their support in promoting this scheme to their members and in the selection of schemes. These projects will make a real difference to communities up and down the country. 2002/3 Modernisation Fund scheme I am very pleased to announce today that we will run the scheme again for 2002/03 and that we will have £1.5m next year to fund many more projects. Those of you that were unsuccessful, do contact RoSPA for feedback and consider reapplying next year. Those of you that decided not to apply this year, we will continue to wish to see projects supported that offer direct practical action to improve home safety. Start thinking about your project now. We plan to post the application criteria for 2002/3 on the Home Safety Network website shortly. Applications will then be invited with a targeted start date of April 2002. Funding for RoSPA will continue into 2002/03 to pump prime activities to support existing work working closely with local groups to meet local needs. Home Safety Network The projects we're already supporting show that there is a great deal of practical local activity which you are all taking forward to promote home safety. I believe there is a lot we can learn from each other - exchanging good practice and learning from other's experience. At last year's Congress, Kim Howells launched the Home Safety Network. This enables safety practitioners to network with one another. It also makes available information, guidance and research produced by the DTI on home safety. Recently we placed 40 of our most recent research reports on the site in full. Covering topics as diverse as safe packaging through to electric blanket fires and safety of older people on stairs. The full contents of our Fireworks toolkit and Schools pack are also available for download. The site also provides an opportunity of letting you know about forthcoming campaigns and exchanging news. The 'members only' part of the site now has over 1,200 members and has proved a useful means of exchanging good practice. I want to develop this so that it provides you as practitioners with information and a network to aid communication. I particularly want to hear about your successful projects and even those not so successful so that you can learn from one another. The site was developed to help improve effective networking between home safety practitioners. We want to hear from you how we can make it better. Constructive criticism is also welcome. Now is a good time to evaluate it 12 months on and ensure it is still meeting your needs. There is a workshop in tomorrow's programme organised by DTW - our Network managing agent - on the Home Safety Network. So please, let us have your thoughts. Safety awareness work This time of year, we always need to turn our attention to the dangers of fireworks. We launched our annual Fireworks campaign in October to inform the public of the inherent risk of serious injuries from misuse of fireworks. We were heartened by the 8% fall in serious injuries last year compared with the previous year, but the tragic news of the 2 deaths, proves that there is no room for complacency. This year we re-produced the very popular Fireworks Toolkit and Schools resource packs which were sent to 25,000 schools. This month sees the Carbon Monoxide Roadshow take to the road involving the indoor CO unit comprising interactive video screens designed to test consumer knowledge of the topic. The unit - which will be staffed by RoSPA throughout - will take in the whole of the UK with a particular focus on the Midlands and Wales, where most fatalities occur. Its larger brother will also be in regular use throughout the heating season. Our safety work on Falls will again take centre stage this year. The DTI Slips, Trips and Broken Hips campaign has been very well received and we know that health professionals from health visitors to pharmacists and chiropodists have need of these materials to assist their work with the elderly. Not surprising, when you consider that of the 2.9m accidents in the home, over 40% are caused by falls, particularly to the elderly. We also know that of serious injuries caused in the home requiring in-patient stays of over 4 days, over 80% are due to falls. And falls account for 43% of accidental deaths in the home. To maintain the momentum built up in 1999 with the launch of the 'Slips, Trips and Broken Hips' campaign, we are, again, working closely with our partners Health Promotion England on Falls this year. Previous years saw development of a wide range of advice leaflets and practitioner guidance. This year, the focus will be press and PR, developing stories of local interest to achieve media coverage. This will be supported by close working with health professionals and others that are involved with older people, and general alliance building. Both written and audio-visual materials are being produced to meet the needs of the ethnic community. All this activity is reinforced by research commissioned by the DTI to determine where falls accidents take place in the home. A further feature of the falls campaign will involve placement of paid for advertisements in local and regional newspapers, magazines and free coverage on local radio stations. Plans are also underway for a Burns and Scalds campaign in the summer to coincide with CAPT's Child Safety Week. This will involve distribution of thousands of leaflets through retail outlets and production and dissemination of the practical guidance materials being developed by CAPT on our behalf. Safer Homes Colleagues at the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) have responsibility for ensuring that the buildings we build are safe to live and work in. This starts even before the construction stage, with the Construction, Design and Management Regulations to ensure safety is fully considered, and also to see that when completed, buildings can be maintained and cleaned safely, and when the time comes, demolished safely. The Building Regulations are highly relevant to home safety, and are there to ensure that buildings offer a healthy and safe environment to their occupants, provide access for the disabled, and conserve energy. One of the most emotive issues dealt with in Building Regulations is fire safety - especially in the home, given that fire accounts for almost 10% accidental deaths in the home. We are keen to ensure that an even higher standard of fire safety is provided in all new homes, and this is being addressed through Part B of the Building Regulations. With regard to escape in the event of a fire, all habitable rooms on the first floor of a dwelling should be provided with an openable window suitable for escape. Previously, escape windows were only required from inner rooms, such as first floor bedrooms where the main stair discharged into an open lounge, rather than a hallway. The risk being that if a fire were to start within the lounge, it could quickly spread up the stairs and trap occupants in the bedroom. However, it is now necessary to provide escape windows for all habitable rooms on the first floor, as this will provide an alternative escape route should the main stair become impassable because of fire or smoke. These are just a few examples of the improvements we have made to the guidance on fire safety. Unfortunately, I don't have time to go into detail on other Building Regulations except to say the DTLR spends about £6 million a year on various aspects of health and safety research. The Construction Directorate at the DTI has a number of schemes and projects linking good building design to better safety in the home including the Government-backed Quality Mark scheme. The scheme aims to protect consumers from bad builders and shares with RoSPA the aim of raising the standards and safety of workmanship completed in private homes. The Quality Mark has been making steady progress since its launch to the public in Birmingham and Somerset in early July. The scheme call centre is receiving more than 50 calls a day from consumers and more than 150 daily hits on the scheme website. More local authorities are keen to use the scheme, including Leicestershire County and Leicester City councils, who will jointly be launching the scheme in their regions on 22 November. As the Quality Mark develops, we are hopeful that quality and standards of maintenance and improvement work will increase and more householders will be encouraged to undertake necessary maintenance work on their homes. Good design Along with all our work on influencing consumer behaviour, we also have to ensure that products are intrinsically safe and that consumers can rely on them. We are working to do that in a number of ways. One is to help producers and their designers to build safety into their product. Good design is a crucial starting point in helping to reduce accidents. Furthermore, it produces better quality products that sell and therefore improves UK competitiveness. You will have heard today, and again tomorrow, of the importance of building safety into design. The DTI have also worked with designers, retailers and the packaging industry to promote safer design through research and discussion. A further piece of research 'Design Safety into Products' was aimed specifically at the design community. This research, carried out by Nottingham University, aims to make ergonomic evaluation a part of the design process. And we have guidance available to help designers and manufacturers design safety into their products. For example, advice on writing clear instructions, so their safe use can be communicated to end users. It is essential that products can be used safety by all age groups. Good design is an important tool in social inclusion. Things that most of us take for granted - twisting the lid off a jam jar, reaching up to get something from a shelf, moving or lifting every day appliances, the placement of handles on doors and windows - are all aspects of life which need to take account of the size and capabilities of older people. That's why DTI has funded world leading research into people's body sizes, strengths and other abilities which can be used to design consumer products which are as safe as possible. This information throws down the challenge to the inventors and innovators to provide a new generation of consumer products which are carefully tailored to fully meet the needs of older people as well as the rest of the population. Those in business who take up the challenge will take market share away from those who don't. DTI research on packaging accidents showed that some of the problems were due to the mismatch between older people's physical capabilities and the way packaging was designed. General Product Safety Directive Another vital role for Government is to make sure that we have the right legal framework to ensure consumer safety. Product safety regulation is an important part of the DTI's work. As many of you will know, the new General Product Safety Directive was finally adopted a month or so ago. It is an important step forward in making the product safety regime in the UK and the rest of Europe more effective. For instance, it will mean that producers and distributors will have a legal obligation to notify the authorities if they discover that a product is unsafe. It will give the public new rights to information about product safety. And it will ensure for the first time that unsafe products which have already been sold to consumers can always be recalled if necessary. I look forward to working with RoSPA, and everyone else with an interest in this important new Directive, as we work to implement it in UK law. Enterprise Bill And finally, I would like to mention that the Enterprise Bill, to be introduced during this Parliamentary Session, will strengthen competition and the power of consumers by radically reforming competition law, transforming our approach to bankruptcy and corporate rescue and promoting new safeguards for consumers. We are putting consumers at the heart of competition policy through measures such as the introduction of the super-complaint, where named consumer bodies can raise important market issues with the Office of Fair Trading. This will ensure that the consumer is more strongly heard on important consumer matters. We will promote safeguards for consumers by providing new powers to enforcement authorities to crack down firmly on traders who do not comply with their legal obligations to consumers. The Stop Now Order regime introduced earlier this year will be extended to infringements of all consumer protection legislation which harm consumers collectively. Closing remarks Building safer homes is a challenge for us all. For Government, business and safety organisations and officers. For all of us, and particularly the elderly and young children, the home should be a safe, secure place not a death trap. Working together, we can ensure that people's homes really are 'safe as houses', not accidents waiting to happen. Thank you for inviting me here today and for your support and efforts throughout the last year with our safety campaigns. I wish your Conference well. |
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Other speeches by Melanie Johnson MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
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