Interesting to read on www.installeronline.co.uk that a new national campaign ‘Spotlight on…illegal workers’ has been launched by the Considerate Constructors Scheme. They undertake 18,000 monitoring visits to construction sites, companies and suppliers every year and according to December 2016 results a lot more could be done by the industry to tackle this problem.
The survey revealed:
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93% agreed illegal working could be better tackled in the construction industry
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81% would say illegal working has been on the rise over the past 15 years
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61% admitted they have not received – or rarely receive – information on illegal working
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33% suspected a chance that illegal working had been present at a previous or current employer
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30% agreed that health and safety was placed at greatest risk as a result of illegal working.
‘Spotlight on…illegal workers’ provides the construction industry with an essential resource to increase understanding of the risks posed by illegal construction workers, and what can be done to tackle the problem.
the Scheme introduced new questions in the 2017 Monitors’ Checklist to encourage sites, companies and supply chains to examine how they are ensuring the legitimacy of their workforce:
- Are there processes in place to ensure subcontractors (and subsequent subcontractors) are conducting right to work checks?
- Are physical spot checks conducted to ensure minimum standards of right to work checks are taking place within the supply chain?
Considerate Constructors Scheme Chief Executive Edward Hardy said: “Ensuring the legitimacy of the workforce is one of the key challenges facing the construction industry today. The industry must work together to ensure that checks for workers’ legitimacy becomes firmly entrenched within all construction activity across the UK.
“By challenging sites to explore how they currently assess and monitor the legitimacy of their workforce, the Scheme believes that in the not-so-distant future, all registered sites, companies and suppliers will have robust procedures in place.
Help is at hand. Mosaic Tally, sometimes known as the time and attendance module, is an easy plug and play system that means all workers scan onto and off the site using their smart cards (including CSCS cards). Tally can be set up to work over multiple access points, allowing your workers and contractors alike to be monitored over large geographical areas. This information can easily be retrieved from the system in the form of a report and effectively means all workers are vetting before given a card.
