Hundreds of working days lost after accidents council reveals

Risk assessment: Barnsley Council has improved its record on checking dangerous activities.

One of those incidents happened at a primary school, records submitted to councillors for 2017 show.

Overall there were 515 working days lost while people recuperated from accidents in the year, with six members of the public taken directly to hospital as a result.

Four of those were from primary schools and another from a secondary school.

The council has health and safety precautions in place and they show that in the third quarter of last year, just over 80 per cent of those hurt while at work were involved in activities which had previously been subject to a risk assessment.

That figure has been creeping, and was marginally higher than the previous three months, but significantly above the 73.8 per cent recorded for the previous year.

No details of the circumstances of individual accidents have been released to councillors, but from the total 77 involved people working at primary schools and 130 were those working at secondary schools.

All the time lost was as a result of accidents which have to be reported under the RIDDOR rules, legislation surrounding the reporting of injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences regulations, which were introduced five years ago.