Regional areas improve fall prevention safety

An inspection campaign across Australia and New Zealand has found that compliance with fall prevention legislation has improved in regional areas.

The campaign — conducted in February and March this year with a focus on preventing falls in construction — looked at 1044 construction sites in metropolitan and regional areas.

WorkSafe WA Commissioner Nina Lyhne said today that the improvements were pleasing.

“The campaign found there had been an overall improvement in falls prevention, particularly within multi-storey housing and especially in regional areas," Lyhne said.

“But the construction industry should not get complacent about falls prevention because there is still a long way to go.

“Despite the improvements, only 35% of the sites inspected were fully compliant with the laws governing falls prevention, and inspectors detected and had rectified 1231 cases of non-compliance while they were at the sites.

“It has been agreed that a further inspection campaign will be conducted in four years’ time to measure the progress made in falls prevention.”

The Code of Practice on the Prevention of Falls in Workplaces is available free from www.worksafe.wa.gov.au.