LOCAL businesses are being urged to take part in a pioneering health and safety scheme.

The message from Bolton Bury training and Enterprise Council is that good practices at work not only reduce accidents and sickness - they boost profits too.

So BBTEC has launched Britain's first health and safety qualification for small and medium-sized businesses.

The TEC will help the first 50 firms taking part by contributing £500 towards the £715 cost of training for the qualification.

"It is a small price for a business to pay to keep staff and customers safe and well," said TEC health and safety manager Steve Horrocks.

He said evidence showed that many small firms failed to maintain steady growth because they did not pay enough attention to this vital subject.

"Sadly it can take a serious accident to underline the importance of health and safety, which is often low on the list of priorities for smaller firms battling to stay competitive," he said.

"At the same time, training courses for full-time safety officers are costly in both time and money and inappropriate for small businesses."

BBTEC is working with training provider John Daker of Hardaker Associates to devise a new qualification to help small and medium-sized firms establish basic but high-quality safety systems and procedures.

It identifies a key person within each company and trains him or her in the essential elements of health and safety.

A three-week training and development session, largely in the workplace and taking just six hours a week, is central to the TEC course.

It is followed by a further three weeks of self-development before candidates are ready to put theory into practice by setting-up health and safety procedures within their companies.

After several months the schemes are assessed and successful candidates gain certificates from the RSA Examinations Board.

There were 72 cases of major injury to employees at work in Bolton in 1994/95 plus 494 incidents leading to three or more days off work. Both figures were up on the previous year.

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