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Missed opportunities to avert asbestos risk

MICK HOLDER explains the deadly and costly story of London Borough of Waltham Forest’s failure to listen to local union reps who tried for many years to get it to manage asbestos safely

RECENT investigations show the London Borough of Waltham Forest (LBWF) has paid £588,120.65 in total for four separate asbestos injury compensation claims against the authority since 2011, with one outstanding claim yet to be settled and one extra but not detailed settled claim at some time in the period from 1965 to 2011. 

Because of the nature of the main asbestos diseases, most of the claimants above will have died because of their exposure or at the very best one or two might be living with a death sentence hanging over them.

One of those compensated worked in a school and the four others were for persons working in or based in council premises.

The latest settlements were for £271,523.70 in 2020/1 and £184,550.42 in 2017/8 and these were far higher than the previous settlements. 

This increase is likely to have occurred because of LBWF’s guilty plea and fine of £66,000 in May 2015 for failing to manage asbestos risk. 

(The two previous settlements were for £70,660.38 in 2014/5 and £61,386.15 in 2011/12). The latest and largest settlement was for a member of Unite the Union and the ongoing case is also understood to be Unite member.

It is worth noting that there will likely have been considerable legal fees associated with these cases, as well as costs of £16,000 arising from the prosecution.

Much, if not all of this could have been prevented if LBWF had listened to local trade union reps who, over a very long period, pushed them for action on asbestos. 

Reps at the time like Unison branch secretary and president of Waltham Forest Trades Council Dave Knight and Unison health and safety representatives Su Manning and Billy Palmer.

While the legal duty on employers to manage asbestos risks safely didn’t arise until the late 1990s, trade unionists were pushing employers to do this long before the regulations were placed in Parliament and saw increased activity on the issue in the run-up to the regulations being adopted. 

Union reps were joined by tenants’ organisations, tenants and residents who lived in housing which contained asbestos in calling for action. 

Many local authorities resisted action as it would have been an admission of a problem they felt would cause more problems for them rather than helping to resolve the problem.

The regulations made inaction on asbestos management less likely, but many authorities and employers had to be pushed into action, as happened in LBWF.

It did not help that our health and safety watchdog, the Health & Safety Executive (HSE), took what local union reps felt was a very hands-off approach to dealing with LBWF for a very long time, using carrot rather than stick on an issue they felt was incredibly serious and which history has sadly proven them right. 

It was only after clear evidence of very serious failure to manage asbestos in the basement of the town hall over a long time arose that HSE chose to prosecute LBWF despite local unions pointing out failures over many years.

To add macabre irony to the story Martin Esom, LBWF’s chief executive who has an environmental health background and who has been employed in senior positions in LBWF since before 2010, is currently a non-executive board member of HSE.

Linda Taaffe, secretary of Waltham Forest Trades Council, said: “We have been in the era where health and safety has been ridiculed as being a pointless burden on business. This very important story with lessons to be learned clearly illustrates why health and safety is vitally important — a matter of life and death — and hopefully goes some way in the fight against the killer deregulators in government and elsewhere. 

“It also illustrates the need for preventative health and safety police force, not the too often missing in action reactive HSE we currently have.

“But, perhaps most importantly for us at WFTC is the need for recognition of the role trade unions and their local reps can and do play in trying to make work healthier and safer for all. 

“If LBWF had acted on matters put to them by local trade union health and safety representatives there is a good chance lives might have been saved and a huge amount of money that the authority could have put to better use would also have been saved.

“And, on a sobering final note, this might not be the end of all this. Given the nature of how asbestos disease can take very many years to develop there may be other compensation cases and deaths long into the future. 

“We recommend all trade union health and safety representatives investigate how well their employer is managing asbestos and ask their health and safety committee how many asbestos disease cases have been settled or are ongoing.”

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