ONE of the UK’s leading forestry firms has once again been honoured for its commitment to health and safety. 

Tilhill was judged as winner of RoSPA’s Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing Industry Sector Award for 2022, recognising efforts made to prevent workplace accidents.

The RoSPA Health and Safety Awards are the largest occupational health and safety awards programme in the UK. Now into their 67th year, they accrue around 2,000 entries, covering nearly 50 countries and a reach of over seven million employees.

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Chris Pike, Tilhill’s head of safety and assurance, said: “The Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing sector has the worst fatal accident rates of all sectors in HSE’s published figures. 

“This makes it even more important that we strive to continually improve safety on our worksites. This Award is fantastic recognition of the efforts made by all our staff and contractors to make our safety ethos come alive on sites every day.”

The programme recognises organisations’ commitment to continuous improvement in the prevention of accidents and ill health at work, looking at entrants’ overarching health and safety management systems, including practices such as leadership and workforce involvement.

While most awards are non-competitive – recognising individual organisations’ achievements – competitive awards are presented in 20 industry sectors and for specialist areas of health and safety management.

Julia Small, RoSPA’s achievements director, said: “We are thrilled that Tilhill has won a RoSPA Award and would like to congratulate them on showing an unwavering commitment to keeping their employees, clients and customers safe from accidental harm and injury.”

While the HSE does routinely name forestry among the highest rate of deaths from work-related accidents in the UK, it does not provide a breakdown of how many of those occurred in the sector, agriculture, and fishing. A total of 22 deaths were recorded in the three sectors in 2021.