A couple in Kingsbury, Warwickshire, lost everything when their house went up in flames due to an electrical fault in their tumble dryer. The back of their house was so badly damaged it had to be rebuilt, and their bedrooms and living rooms were scarred by smoke damage. Life for this couple and their young family, understandably, became incredibly difficult as they struggled through financial and emotional stress whilst they rebuilt their home.

 At the time, the couple were unaware that their particular tumble dryer had been recalled, and carried on using the tumble dryer because they thought it functioned fine. After the devastation they experienced they are now currently backing Electrical Safety Firsts campaign to raise awareness of the danger of electrical items and why it is so important to register your electrical products and keep an eye out for product recalls.

Faulty appliances cause £41.6 million of damage every and roughly 46 deaths per year in the UK alone.

Whilst it is important to look after your family and pets at home by registering your electrical products, it is equally as important to look after your employee’s in the work place.

The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 requires you to ensure that any electrical equipment that you have in workplace that have the potential to cause an injury is maintained in a safe condition. There frequency of the inspections and test of your electrical equipment is simply down to the type of equipment that you are using in your workplace. So for example, a computer in an office will need to be checked more often than a desk lamp.

It is recommended that all electrical products within commercial properties and rented accommodation is PAT tested at least once a year. Because the UK is now importing more and more of our electrical goods from overseas, it is quite possible that they have not been subject to a strict examination and testing procedure, like UK manufactured appliances. So the testing of these appliances and products is of paramount importance.   

PAT Testing is a complex procedure that should only be carried out by trained electricians.

Once the electrician has completed the PAT test a label should be placed on the equipment highlighting the status of the equipment. “Passed for use” means that the equipment is safety and ready to use. “failed Do not Use” means that the appliance has failed the test and should not be used under any circumstances with until it is has been fixed or replaced. Most PAT Testing Labels will also have the date of when the nest test is due. Acting as a reminder to keep your appliances tested and maintained so you are safe from risk of injury or fire.

Be sure to keep your home and work place safe by registering all your electrical appliances, looking out for product recalls and PAT testing appliances in the workplace to ensure the safety of your work place.  

Click here to view our range of PAT Testing labels and record cards. 

Health and safety executive have released a new strategy for the health and safety systems that will take us through to 2020, this strategy have been broken down into 6 key themes. In order for this to be successful it requires us all to work together, communicate about health and safety changes in the workplace, everyone taking responsibility for health and safety, employees as well as employers, share new ideas about how to combat challenging health and safety risks, helping businesses grow by simplifying risk management and tackling the costs of work related illnesses head on.

2004/05 Health statistics 

• 545,000 cases of ill health 
• 223 people were killed at work 
• £17.4 billion estimated cost of injuries and ill health from working conditions 
• 35.2 million working days lost

 2014/2015 health statistics 

• 1.2million working people are suffering from a work-related illness
• 2,538 people died from mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure (2013)
• 142 people were killed at work 
• 76,000 people reported injuries under RIDDOR
• 611,000 injuries occurred at work
• 27.3 million Working days were lost due to work related illness and work place injury
• £14.3 billion estimated cost of injuries and ill health from current working conditions.  (2013/14)

Stats from HSE  

Over the last 10 years we have all been working hard to create a safe working environment for our workers and our efforts are paying off! Here in GB we take health and safety extremely seriously and our Health and Safety Record reflects our efforts. Currently GB’s Health and Safety record is one of the best in the world. However, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement. 

Here, at label Source we have put our heads together and come up with 5 tips on how you can improve your workplace safety in 2016:

Plan to control workplace hazards

Identify all the hazards in your workplace and make sure you take the relevant steps to completely eliminate the hazard, or at least minimize them. To do this you will need to develop a comprehensive safety plan. 

Make sure that if you cannot completely eliminate a workplace hazard, that you are alerting people of the hazard through the use of safety signs. 

Train your staff

Comprehensive training must be given to all members of staff, especially if they are expected to work in an environment where there is a risk of injury. Make sure that you provide all of your employees with a written document outlining all the companies’ safety procedures so they have a point of reference. If you are not training your staff to a high level, you are endangering your employees. If your company is found to be guilty of health and safety breaches, your company will be held liable if there is an incident and could lead to your company having to go to court. 

Inspect your workplace, frequently 

Make sure that any machinery, tools, equipment that your employees are using are well looked after and maintained on a regular basis. Across the UK thousands of accidents happen whilst people are operating machinery. This could be because they are not wearing the correct PPE, the machine is malfunctioning and no one has reported it or the workers are simply not trained to operate the equipment. 

You can help prevent injuries to your staff while they are operating dangerous machines, using hazardous tools & equipment or whilst they are working in a hazardous area by using mandatory safety signs. These signs serve to remind your workers of what is expected of them, for example, wearing the correct PPE, using the correct equipment through to washing their hands – to prevent the spread of disease.  

Investigate all incidents

Not all incidents are fatal, not all incidents cause injury or illness, however it is important that if there is an incident that it is investigated to determine why the incident happened and what can be done to prevent the hazard getting worse and happening again.  

Keep up to date records

Ensure that you are keeping a record of all the incidents that occur, all the accidents that happen, first aid treatment, inspections, and training. By keeping up to date records you will be able to identify any tends in incidents. Maybe there is a gap in their training – keeping records will help you identify this. 

Join in the conversation at #HelpGBWorkWell

Follow us on facebook and twitter for regular health and safety blog updates. 

While most of the focus on renewable energy tends to concentrate on solar or wind powered generation, biomass could provide an effective and growing source of low carbon fuel to meet the targets set by the Renewable obligation for England, Wales and Scotland (effective 1/12/15) together with reductions in Greenhouse gases (GHG).

Whereas solar and wind power are reliant totally on suitable weather conditions, which in our climate can be uncertain, output from biomass generation can be controlled more effectively, thus producing more efficient use of resources.

Biomass is the use of plant, animal or vegetable residue for producing electricity (biogas), gas (bio-methane) and transport fuels (biofuels). This process of anaerobic digestion can include slurry, silage, manure, chicken litter, maize, straw, fish oil, apple pomace, cheese making waste and husks from cocoa, cashew, sunflower, and sugar beet etc. This creates green or lean carbon energy.

Apart from supplying the local demand for power, heat or fuel, from residues from agriculture, forestry, aquaculture and fisheries, these resources can be used more widely. For example, bio-methane (the purified form of biogas on removal of carbon dioxide) can be connected to the gas grid. Also, biofuel can power compression and spark ignition engines, gas turbines, fuel cells and heating appliances.

Bio-fertilisers can be recovered in the form of digestate, to PAS110 standards, and can replace fossil fuel derived fertilisers. This is an environmentally sound and cost effective practice.

Label Source has worked with biomass generators in supplying ranges of pipeline tapes for marking component parts of the digester production process and storage plant, as well as a range of safety and operational signs for the industry. For more information contact us by e-mail sales@labelsource.co.uk or by telephone 0800 3761693 (Freephone UK) or +44 (0) 1443 842769. These products can assist in creating a safe working environment, to prevent workplace accidents, operational malfunctions, or environmental damage in the event of incidents.

Labelling your assets is probably one of the most important things you need to be doing to all your company’s assets. By creating an asset management system you can reap numerous benefits, such as adding security to your company’s assets, tracking the whereabouts of your assets, simplifying your company’s inventory management system, monitoring your assets maintenance, and calculating depreciation plus much more.

Using Asset labels to provide quick asset identification.

When you are running a business you don’t want you or your employees wasting their time trying to track the company’s assets. As every second an employee has used searching for an asset is a loss of productivity. If you are managing hundreds of people, then the time that they are spending searching adds up equating to a significant loss in company productivity over a short period. By implementing an asset management system you can locate the needed asset in seconds.

Using Asset labels to facilitate Inventory management

For every business inventory management and stock control is one of the most time consuming activities, often performed on a monthly basis.  However, using a manual inventory system increases room of human error. Using asset labels you will be able to ensure that your inventory control database is accurate so you will not end up with stock surplus or deficiencies.

Using Asset labels to Deter Theft

One of the biggest benefits of asset labelling is to deter theft of your assets. If your company owns expensive, movable assets, for example, laptops, monitors, TV’s. Thieves will be less inclined to steal these if they are clearly asset labelled as they are more likely to get caught.

Here at label source we offer a variety of asset tags designed specifically to provide evidence of tampering. Click here to view our range of tamper evident asset tags.

Calculate Asset Depreciation

Every year companies have to file their tax returns; all companies have to calculate the depreciation rate of all their assets. Labelling your assets can help calculate the life of your assets and help you gather all the necessary data to make your calculations.

Your company may have already adopted many of the uses of asset tags, but it is always interesting to find different ways in which you can use asset tagging for your business. If you haven’t already developed an asset tagging system - Investing in asset labels can benefit your company in many different ways for years to come.  

At Label Source we are proud to offer a comprehensive range of asset labels. If you require a bespoke asset label solution, simply use our asset tag builder.  If, in the unlikely event you cannot find the tag that you are looking for then don’t hesitate to contact a member of our customer service team either by emailing info@labelsource.co.uk or calling us on 0800 3761 693