View our Health & safety challenges on a typical farm and some examples of solutions to reduce risks of injury.
Staff welfare and Dairy entrance/exit right onto a busy yard with vehicle movements with risk of Vehicle/Pedestrian collision. Visitor entrance too.
(i) Provide physical separation barrier with scaffold to create a protected walkway from the staff entrance to a safer crossing point with better visibility and reduce risk of persons walking straight out of building into the path of vehicles.
(ii) Provide reminder signage to Pedestrians - Yellow Warning - to be aware of vehicles – These are located immediately as you leave the building and as you leave the protected walkway.
Vehicle and pedestrian mix in the yard area.
(i) Provide visual clues and signage at key points – especially potential vehicle crossing points to keep pedestrians aware – especially visitors who are unfamiliar to the farm.
(ii) Provide separate visitors car park area – Clearly signed.
(iii) Display speed limit signs: - 10mph or 5mph depending on site size and visibility
(iv) Identify pedestrian crossing points to both vehicle drivers and pedestrians
NB:- Possibly further physically separated pedestrian walkways could be provided from visitors car park along part of the route shown here towards the visitors reception
Decanting corrosive chemicals ready for diluting, provides a risk of splashing of chemicals onto skin and eyes and severe burns.
(i) Provision of simple pump action dispensers onto larger containers helps reduce the risk of splashing from pouring into a bucket too quickly.
(ii) Use Automatic dispensing of chemicals where possible to minimise chemical handling. Handling now consists of simple lid and tube changing.
Getting staff to remember to wear PPE for high-risk chemical handling tasks.
(i) Provide PPE at the location where it needs to be used – there is no excuse
(ii) Provide clean storage for it and ability to keep it clean.
(iii) Provide yellow warning and blue mandatory signage for staff and get signage in different languages as necessary.
(iv) Instruct staff in its use.
Farm Safety week is the 16th - 20th of July and here at LKL we are encouraging you to look again at the health and safety standards on your farm with your staff to check to see if you have everything in place and if there is anything more you could do to reduce the risk of injury.
Transport on the farm was identified as one of the highest causes of death and injury including; hit by a moving vehicle, trapping and entanglement.
Why not complete one of the checklists from the Government transport office website or NFU to check that you are doing everything you need to do in terms of maintenance, training and safe systems of work for staff on the farm and help raise the profile of transport safety on your farm this month.
Find your next farm job through LKL. Our network of field-based managers, supported by a small team of specialists based at our Salisbury headquarters, are responsible for maintaining regular contact with farm owners and managers.