GroundsWeek is an annual celebration of the often overlooked groundskeeper, who plays a vital role in maintaining the green spaces that enhance our lives and support mental and physical well-being. The week is marked by activities and campaigns to promote the profession, share best practices, and appreciate the work groundskeeping professionals accomplish. An entire week dedicated to highlighting the skills of grounds staff, whilst inspiring everyone to appreciate the industry. Groundskeepers Roles and Responsibilities It requires specialist training to enable for a grounds person to carry out their daily activities such as mowing, hedge-cutting, strimming and leaf blowing...

A company in Kent has been fined after an accident occurred at a construction site of six houses on Smarden Road in Headcorn, Kent. A sub-contractor, had been installing vertical hanging tiles on one of the new properties when he fell 1.8 metres through an unguarded opening in scaffolding and landed on the ground below. The accident happened on the 5th July 2017 and resulted in Mark Tolley sustaining several broken ribs and serious internal injuries including a punctured lung. He later died on 13 July 2017. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has found that Amberley Homes (Kent) Ltd, a construction company in Kent, did not control the construction site eff..

A fascinating report courtesy of TyreSafe Admin National Highways Imperial College London looking at tread depth survey at the point of tyre replacement. The 2023 findings show an overall reduction in the number of illegal and borderline tyres at the point of replacement compared to 2016 but 16.7% of tyres were below the legal limit when replaced. The 2023 findings confirm the number of illegal tyres on Britain’s roads annually is potentially as many as nearly one-in-four vehicles – at just over 6.1 million per annum! How scary is that (especially during these wintry months)? Lack of sufficient awareness among drivers of the need to carry out systematic and regular checks of their tyr..

A recent global report generated from Good to Go Safety’s TakeAIM pre-use checking app, showed that one in a hundred fleet vehicles had a fault so serious that the vehicle had to be immediately removed from service until fixed. Had these vehicles been driven, it could have resulted in a breakdown and/or a collision. There are 5.4 million fleet assets on British roads. If that 1% of vehicles which were not roadworthy is extrapolated to the whole fleet, this means 54,000 fleet vehicles on any given day are not fit or safe to drive on the public highway. The roadworthiness challenge facing fleets is even greater, as there is evidence that as fleet car registrations fall, the use of grey f..

Starting on 24 April, the HSE (The Health and Safety Executive) will carry out 100 targeted inspections of fairground and theme park rides following a string of incidents throughout the UK. The campaign's strategy is to promote the safe use of fairground rides and inflatable devices and reduce the risk of catastrophic incidents. The campaign is targeted at both theme park sites and travelling fairgrounds and is set to finish by September 2023. It wasn't long ago that we wrote about an incident at Oakwood Theme Park in Wales when a man and his teenage daughter's support bars failed on a rollercoaster resulting in the man falling 26ft to the ground. In our previous blog we highlighted a str..

Anyone involved with driving for work or for the management of fleet vehicles should find our latest guide of interest as it highlights ways for businesses to improve vehicle inspections and management. This TakeAIM guide provides useful advice on getting the most out of your fleet and covers many of the key questions and considerations that management may come across. We look at key legislation, industry statistics, grey fleet issues, and driver concerns as we aim to deliver the answers and possible solutions to help improve and implement fleet management systems. With the large costs associated with running a fleet in today’s market, a good fleet manager can actually result in a posi..

It’s not always obvious where to start with managing driver risk. After all, there are so many different areas that need to be tackled. And how do we know whether what we’re doing is good or bad, or whether we have any glaring gaps. It’s easy to feel like we’re just going round in circles. There is a simple process that can help you, based around four easy-to-understand steps: 1. Benchmarking – Do I need to improve? 2. Gap Analysis – If I need to improve, where do I start? 3. Action – How do I make improvements? 4. Check – How big were the improvements? Driving for Better Business has created a range of free online tools that can help you with all these key steps. Benchmarking s..