Safety First!

During the past decade almost one person a week has been killed as a direct result of agricultural work in the UK, with many more seriously injured or made ill by their work. Charlotte Cooper investigates the relevance of these figures to smallholders.

- Charlotte Cooper

I remember, when I was in my late teens, thinking I’d quickly take some hay out to the ewes. I’d barely driven the Honda in a straight line before, let alone reversed with a trailer, but I blithely jumped on and had a go. It jack-knifed, I was thrown off and ended up under the quad. I was lucky. I suffered no injury worse than a banged head (no, I wasn’t wearing a helmet). But it’s easy to see how a more serious injury could have happened, purely because of taking a stupid risk.

Thirty-two people were killed or fatally injured while working on British farms between April 2018 and March 2019, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) figures report (Country Smallholding, August 2019, News). And although the HSE doesn’t categorise incidents by size of farm, it’s a fair assumption that a proportion of these accidents will have taken place on smallholdings.

Deaths on smallholdings in the past two years include retired plumber Charlie Lovell, who was crushed by his skid steer loader, volunteer farmhand Lauren Scott, who died after her hair and clothes became trapped in a power take-off (PTO), and rare breeds enthusiast Andrew Sheppy, who fell from a mezzanine floor in an outbuilding while fetching wood.

These tragic accidents highlight two of the three main danger points on any farm — vehicles, livestock handling and falls from a height. And all the dangers that affect large farms are also present on smallholdings, says Luke Messenger of the HSE agricultural inspection team. That’s why safe practice is equally important, whether you have two acres or 2,000.

“Death, injuries and ill health are not an inevitable part of smallholding,” said Mr Messenger. “Not one of the 32 fatal injuries in the past year was due to anything new. Accidents like those had all happened before and all were covered by legislation.”