Speech by Sir James Bevan, Chief Executive, Environment Agency, UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources.

The ten-second summary of the speech is

You can only have healthy humans if you have a healthy planet. When we damage nature we damage people too. If we look after nature, it will look after us. Doing so costs money. But it’s the best possible investment we could make, because the benefit/cost ratio is fantastic – not just in costs saved for the NHS, but in lives saved for our communities, and a future saved for our planet.

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/healthcare-for-planets-and-humans-why-looking-after-nature-is-good-for-mind-body-and-the-nhs

The provisional annual data for work-related fatal accidents revealed that 111 workers were fatally injured at work between April 2019 and March 2020 (a rate of 0.34 deaths per 100,000 workers), the lowest year on record. HSE comment that this represents a fall of 38 deaths from the previous year, though it is likely that this fall was accentuated by the impact of coronavirus (COVID-19) on the economy in the final two months of the year. https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/fatals.htm.

HSE urges businesses to become COVID-secure. Being COVID-secure means being adaptable to the current guidance and putting measures in place to control the risk of coronavirus to protect workers and others. HSE lists five practical steps that businesses can take to do that: