CPD at University of the West of Scotland (UWS)

UWS Centre For Continuing Professional Development, are offering a couple of their MSc Waste & Resource Management modules as stand along CPD courses:

The Two modules are:

Funding may be available to delegates via the UWS Upskilling Fund. The UWS Upskilling Fund is a budget for delivering training to Scottish industry sectors, provided, and moderated by the Scottish Funding Council.

To receive this funding, delegates must reside in Scotland or, work for an organisation operating (with a business address) in Scotland.

If you are successful in obtaining funding a registration fee of £50 will apply only (the full module fee is £930) and you will be provided with a discount code to use at check-out upon application. Please also contact the CPD team,  to discuss other potential funding mechanisms if you are not eligible for the UWS Upskilling Fund.

For more information on the modules, contact Dr Iain McLellan.

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Staying Safe & Active in Later Life – Roadshows

RoSPA and insurer RSA Group team up on a new home safety project, promoting the importance of remaining active in later life.

Maintaining an active lifestyle and keeping good levels of strength and balance can reduce your chances of having a fall. Knowing about hazards in the home is also important, so you can make some quick, simple changes to address them.

Five virtual Safe and active in later life: falls prevention roadshows are taking place to give people in later life, their families and falls prevention practitioners the opportunity to find out more about building exercise into a daily routine. The sessions will run from Monday, November 30 – Friday, December 4 and are open to people from across the UK. You can find out more about these sessions and book a place, by visiting the events page.

 

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ScORSA Webinar – Fatigue & Driving for Work – 26th November 2020

This year ScORSA have decided to change the format of our their annual St Andrew’s seminar.

The event will be split into a series of three webinars with Part One taking place on Thursday 26th November, Part 2 in January and Part 3 in February.  Each part will cover a separate topic and will begin this month by discussing the issue of Fatigue and Driving for Work.

The programme for the workshop session will be:

10am – 11.30am

  • 15 min intro from Chair , Dr Karen McDonnell, RoSPA Policy Adviser and Head of Road Scotland
  • 20 min break-out rooms facilitated by
    • Michelle Little, Road Safety Framework, Transport Scotland;
    • Michael McDonnell, Director,  Road Safety Scotland;
    • Blair Boyd, ScORSA Member and #DrivingTiredKills case study and
    • Dr Karen McDonnell, ScORSA/RoSPA
  • 10 min feedback
  • 15 min conclusion from Chair

Although unable to meet face-to-face this year, ScORSA hope that the break-out rooms format will allow for some thought-provoking discussion and valuable sharing of experience.

Please join ScORSA for this interesting new format on a very important topic.

To reserve a place, please email: info@scorsa.org.uk

 

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Battery Fire Risk Hits the Headlines – By Euan Munro

The explosive problem of “Zombie Batteries”

Euan Munro from SLR Consulting writes article on the risk of Lithium-Ion battery fires.

 

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Health & Safety Statistics for Scotland 2020 Published

HSE publish workplace health and safety statistics for Scotland, 2020.

The report provides a summary of workplace health and safety in Scotland.

Key statistics include:

  • 99,000 Workers suffering from work-related ill health each year
  • 10 Fatal injuries to workers
  • 45,00 Non-fatal injuries to workers each year
  • £1.2 billion cost of workplace injury and ill health
  • 829 Enforcements notices served
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SEPA Consultation – Revised Guidance WDT-G-002

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) proposing to change the existing guidance document, WST-G-002 Provision and assessment of technically competent management at licensed waste management facilities meaning SEPA will now assess technical competence on the basis of any known previous compliance history as well as on approved qualifications held or bespoke assessment undertaken, rather than focusing only on the latter as was the case previously.

For further information and enter the consultation please click here.

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Health & Safety Conference 2020 – 12th November 2020

The 5th Annual Health and Safety in Waste and Recycling Conference will take place online this year on Thursday 12th November.

To view the full day programme please click here where you will see there are contributions from WSH, UNITE, HSE, Veolia, Comply Direct and more.

For more information and too book your place please visit the health and safety website 

 

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CIWM Scottish Resource Webinar – Building Sector Reliance

Thursday 26th November 10:30 – 12:00

Click Here to Register to join the webinar

The theme of this year’s virtual event will be ‘Building Sector Resilience: what 2020 taught us and what happens now’. It will take place as a 90-minute webinar session and will also include an interactive Q&A session with the panellists and an after-event ‘Network roulette’.

The session will look at how COVID-19 has impacted Scotland and its journey toward a circular economy, and what needs to happen to build back better, greener and more resilient than before.

Our panelists will represent government planning, green finance, behaviour change, local authorities and the private sector and will represent an accurate ‘health check’ of the resources sector in Scotland, as well as being able to look forward to Scotland’s green recovery.

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Webinar – Adapting Waste Services to COVID-19

Wednesday 11th November 14:00 – 15:00

Click Here to Register to join the webinar

Why this is relevant:
COVID-19 has had a profound effect on every aspect of our lives, from the pattern of business activity, to where we shop and how we socialise. For London waste authorities this impacts how they deliver services. The capital’s local authorities have had to be responsive and adaptive to maintain their domestic and commercial waste and recycling collection services, whilst attempting to forecast the ongoing impact COVID-19 will have – which is particularly important given the likelihood now of a second wave.

About the event:
LWARB is hosting this webinar to share knowledge on three COVID-19 research projects we commissioned to help London local authorities respond to the pandemic. Join us to hear insights on:

• A study to predict the impact of COVID-19 on commercial waste volumes and composition within London;
• Learnings from London waste authorities’ responses to the need to protect waste and recycling services during the March 2020 COVID-19 lockdown; and
• An extension to the waste compositional study conducted as part of the ‘Making recycling work for people in flats’ project, to look at the impact COVID-19 measures have had on waste volumes and composition in purpose built flats.

Although London is the focus of this research, it will be of interest to local authorities elsewhere (particularly those in urban areas), regional and national government, as well as the wider waste industry.

Agenda:

  • Antony Buchan Scene setting
  • Cathy Cook Learnings from waste authorities’ responses to protecting waste and recycling services
  • Sarah Craddock Assessment of the future impact of COVID-19 on commercial waste volumes and composition
  • Gemma Scott Impact of COVID-19 on waste composition in purpose built flats
  • Questions
  • Antony Buchan Summing up
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RMAS – Test & Protect and When to Isolate

Test and Protect

  • Test and Protect has now been operating for more than four months and is doing what we need it to – identifying positive cases and tracing their close contacts so they can get appropriate public health advice to limit the spread of the virus.
  • It is still essential to continue with other measures to reduce transmission: physical distancing, hand and respiratory hygiene, and appropriate use of face coverings.

Complex cases, including those involving key and emergency service workers, are escalated to experienced teams

  • We cannot offer blanket assurances that certain workforces can be exempt from isolation.
  • If co-workers have been maintaining appropriate physical distancing, then they may have no or few close contacts.
  • If a case is wearing PPE, a risk assessment to assess close contacts is needed.
  • In complex cases, specialist public health advice and management will be required.
  • It is essential that employers carry out a Covid-19 risk assessment to reduce the risk of transmission in the workplace and have robust plans in place to manage the impact of workforce absence due to isolation.

Self-Isolation

  • We currently advise that if someone has been identified as a close contact of a COVID case they have to self-isolate for 14 days. This 14-day period is critical to prevent the virus from spreading because it can take up to 14 days for an infected person to develop the illness (the incubation period). This means that if they get tested and receive a negative result before the 14 days have passed, we cannot be sure that the illness will not develop. If they leave isolation before these 14 days are complete, they could potentially spread the virus in the community.
  • A close contact is defined as a person who, in the infectious period from 48 hours prior to and 10 days after the confirmed case’s symptom onset, or date a positive test was taken if asymptomatic, had at least one of the following types of exposure
  1. Household contact: those who share the household or have spent a significant amount of time in the house without social distancing or This also includes cleaners, even if the index case is not present due to the invasive nature of this job.
  2. Direct contact: close contact outside the house without PPE, of within one metre of index case.
  3. Proximity contact: close contact without PPE for more than 15 minutes between 1 and 2 metres of index case.
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