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Construction worker fatalities in the UK have risen sharply – up 70% compared to pre pandemic levels, with research from the Health and Safety Executive showing that 51 construction workers died in workplace accidents in the year to March 2024. For all other industries, the figures have remained the same.
This concerning trend reminds us of the importance of workplace health and safety measures in the built environment sector. With the Government’s goal to build 1.5 million new homes over the next five years and the role that utilities will play in connecting these homes to essential services, it is incumbent on forward-looking organisations to address health and safety matters head-on.
As an industry leader and responsible employer working on hundreds of client projects each year, we take our role in ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of all stakeholders very seriously.
Given the critical role utilities providers play in delivering residential developments, we believe we must do everything to ensure a ‘safety culture’ alongside concrete, practical actions.
The importance of health and safety for everyone
Employees, contractors, customers, investors and the economy all benefit when we take health and safety seriously. This is why our core safety principle is, ‘If it’s not safe, we don’t do it.’ This principle guides everything, from the use of PPE, hazard identification, and risk assessments to how we drive and complete tasks. You can rest assured that every action we take is focused on protecting the well-being of every stakeholder involved.
Teams working in high-risk environments benefit from an approach like ours where they have permission to stop work if it’s unsafe, reducing the risk of injury and preventing accidents. Our contractors and collaborators benefit too, through joint trenching projects, toolbox talks and permits to work, creating a safe working environment and reducing time lost to injury.
The cost of unsafe and incautious actions can be significant beyond the risk of injury, illness, or fatality. Research from the National Underground Asset Register shows that accidental damage to underground utility assets costs the UK economy an estimated £2.4 billion every year. While poor health and safety will corrode reputation, trust, and ultimately shareholder value.
One of our ‘Miles Safer’ rules (more on these below) provide clear protocols around excavation ensuring it’s carried out with caution and precision. This helps to prevent significant costs to the economy at large and protect shareholder value and brand equity by minimising accidental damage and ensuring projects are delivered on time and on budget.
Safety management and a ‘generative’ safety culture
At Last Mile we care about people. Their safety is our top priority and integral to our overall strategy. We’re always innovating, and furthering our commitment to zero fatalities, zero injuries, zero occupational illnesses and incidents, by embedding a proactive safety culture.
We have a robust safety management system that adheres to a comprehensive framework built around our ISO accreditations: 9001, 45001, 14001. By promoting a proactive, risk-based approach to safety we can:
- Identify and manage health and safety risks early to keep everyone safe
- Minimise the likelihood of accidents so nobody gets hurt
- Ensure compliance with health and safety regulations to enhance our sector and make collaboration between partners and industry incumbents easier
- Enhance overall performance to meet the UK’s net zero and house building goals
However, we insist on implementing more than just a management system.
To meet our long-term goal and have sustained high levels of safety performance, we are also creating a ‘safety culture’: a dynamic set of shared values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that influence how safety is prioritised and managed within our organisation. Safety cultures can be modelled on ‘Hudson’s safety culture ladder’, which outlines several stages of development, and which can be used to analyse and assess the maturity of an organisation’s safety culture:
Our commitment at Last Mile is to establish a generative safety culture where safety is embedded in every level of our organisation to drive proactive behaviour and continuous improvement. This will also make safety inherent to our business, making it a differentiator and advantage.
We’ve outlined 10 goals to help achieve our aim of creating a generative safety culture. These include having integrated ‘all level’ committees, developing an internal reward scheme and holding targeted monthly briefings on a wealth of KPIs that we’re tracking.
What we’re doing doesn’t end there; we’ve also launched our Miles Safer Rules and Leadership Site Tours to protect and support front-line teams.
Our Miles Safer rules help to embed every-level safety
Our Miles Safer rules focus on the high-risk activities in our sector. They help us to meet our safety objectives and support our guiding principle (‘if it’s not safe, we don’t do it’). There are eight rules, and all operations and construction staff receive a Safety Commitment card to keep this front of mind.
These rules are mandatory for all our employees, contractors, and the employees of our client organisations, who are actively working in higher-risk environments.
They have been designed to align with industry expectations so we can be flexible in meeting the needs and demands of our main contractors and collaborators.
Accountability is shared. That’s why we go far beyond simply communicating the rules to ensure they’re implemented. We provide enforcement and education, safe workplace conditions including tools, equipment and anchor points, for example, giving everyone the authority to intervene when they feel a rule isn’t being followed. This is our duty as a responsible employer.
Key to creating a safety-focused culture is visible commitment of the senior leaders. We conduct regular senior leadership tours, to reinforce and promote the Miles Safer rules through direct engagement with our employees and contractors on the ground.
The tours aren’t designed to focus on the detail of whether safety measures are being followed, they’re there to address strategic safety priorities and create meaningful conversations that lead to lasting improvements. It’s not about manual handling techniques, it’s about understanding, dialogue and big-picture change. Every senior leader conducts a quarterly site tour, which will rotate between sites, job types, regions and teams.
Learn more about our safety schemes
Comprehensive health and safety practices deliver concrete benefits across the utilities sector. Developing a generative safety culture reduces workplace accidents, minimises project delays, and can prevent the costly damage to underground assets that impacts the wider economy. Through robust safety management systems, clear rules, and leadership engagement, utilities can continue to grow unencumbered by injury, accident, and the associated lost time. These practices protect workers, enhance operational efficiency, build stakeholder trust, and ultimately support the UK’s housing and net zero goals.
