“Torch is lit” former head of quarries tells BAA

Members of the British Aggregates Association (BAA) have been told that “the torch is lit” in terms of developing an exacting health and safety system for independent operators, and that they should now “…all take pride in seeing it carried forward.”

Former head of the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE’s) quarry inspectorate, Eric Darlow, was speaking at the independent quarry body’s AGM in Rutland Water on Monday, before presenting awards to the first two firms to sign up to the scheme.

Kinegar Sand and Gravel and Raymond Brown Minerals are the first two members to fully implement the BAA Scheme for Assessing Operating Standards, a H&S enabler that focuses on site competence rather than just the competence of individuals.

The scheme, which has been rubber stamped by the Quarries National Joint Advisory Committee (QNJAC), had the potential to make a substantial and significant contribution to worker welfare, said Darlow.

And as the man who set up and conceived of QNJAC, he said, the quarrying stakeholder body endorsement gave him “…particular satisfaction”.

With the individual specific focus of the QPA scheme and the site competence element of the BAA system, the industry now had two good tools with which to beat a path to target zero, Darlow told MQR.

However, any good system needs support, he told the BAA members. "The scheme not only looks at the paper qualifications of individuals, but takes into account those people who have been, and in many cases continue to be, the backbone of the industry – managers, supervisors and operators who are highly qualified by virtue of experience.

“To be successful, however, the scheme requires high level support from BAA members, trade unions, enforcing authorities and so on. But the torch is lit.”

BAA figures state around 25% of their members have currently joined, or are on the point of joining, the scheme.