New health and safety lead committed to carrying on Deano's work

6 October 2023

Health and safety needs to be everyone’s responsibility.

That’s the view of Patrick McBrearty, West Midlands Police Federation’s new health and safety lead.

Patrick takes over the role from Deano Walker, the Fed’s former health and safety lead, who retired from policing in the summer.

He said he wanted to build on Deano’s work and raise awareness with officers about health and safety.

“Deano’s a fantastic guy,” said Patrick. “He’s a really nice person who worked really hard.

“I’m really looking forward to following on from his work and trying to educate officers and raise awareness.

Patrick McBrearty, West Midlands Police Federation’s new health and safety lead.

“How do you educate people on a subject that’s not the most captivating?

“That’s one of the things I’m looking forward to doing and making a subject that’s not very exciting more interesting.”

Having joined West Midlands Force in 2002, Patrick’s career has seen him in a variety of roles, including nine years in uniform front line, later working as an intelligence officer investigating serious crime followed by a role as a cyber crime protection officer.

In 2021, he became a Workplace Rep and earlier this year became chair of the branch’s health and safety committee.

Patrick said there was, for him, an obvious crossover between health and safety and his previous area of work in cyber crime.

“That was all about presenting the risks of cyber crime so that people could be more aware of it,” he said.

“For instance, 90 per cent of cyber crime occurs following spear-phishing emails. So you need everybody to be aware of what a spear-phishing email is, not just the IT department, so they can identify it and report it rather than click the link or download the attachment.

“And that’s how I see health and safety.

“If you see something, something happens, or there’s a near miss you need to report it to protect others in the future and further down the line.

“It’s about education and awareness, and it’s everyone’s responsibility.”

One of Patrick’s priorities in his new role as health and safety lead was to change the culture around reporting near misses, he said.

“There’s definitely an under-reporting of near misses,” he said. “Today’s near miss is tomorrow’s accident for someone else.

“We can’t hammer home enough the need to report near misses.

“If we as a Federation go to the Force when people complain about things, they’ll look at it and say that no-one has reported it.

“In policing terms, we need the evidence so that we can do something before something goes wrong.

“Because when something goes wrong in health and safety it goes very wrong.”