More than one worker a day takes their own life – three times the UK rate for men

Construction knows it has a problem. Working on a building site has become the deadliest profession in the UK, but the dangers have nothing to do with cranes or ladders.

More than 1,400 construction workers took their own lives between 2011 and 2015, according to national statistics. In 2016, the figure was put at 450. The rate is more than three times the national average for men.

Labourers, plasterers and crane operators are more likely than ever to be off sick, but it won’t be bad backs or broken bones that get them signed off, but anxiety, stress and depression.

“We lose more than one construction worker every day to suicide,” said Bill Hill, the chief executive of the Lighthouse Club charity, which supports the construction industry. “It’s a horrendous statistic.”

And one that raises the question why? There are a number of factors at play. The industry is overwhelmingly (more than 80%) male – and men are far more likely to take their lives than women. Workers spend long periods away from home, friends and family, in an unforgiving culture.

“You are billeted up sometimes in a caravan with three other mates, and you have a smoking and drinking culture,” Hill said. “You are away from home, socially isolated. Online gambling is an issue – the next thing you know they have lost this month’s wage packet.”

“It’s a high pressure environment,” adds Mark Carrington, the managing director of Worksafe Partnership, an independent health and safety consultancy. “A lot of guys are away from family all week, when every night you might be on the booze, you’re in a room by yourself. Loneliness, the drink, the pressure – the banter when it goes too far and becomes bullying.”

Several workers interviewed said drink, drugs and online gambling became refuges for lonely workers, so they quickly went from having one problem to having two or three.

Take the lot of the crane operator: stranded for several hours at a time, alone, no mobile phones allowed, doing technical, stressful work, and so remote that some even use a kind of condom-style tube to relieve themselves.

Job insecurity is also a huge factor. The overwhelming need to do big projects cheaply, so costs to the taxpayer are minimal, has resulted in such competitive bidding that industry margins are tighter than ever.

And even if the company leading a project has noble aims of a healthy workforce, they can’t always project that down through tiers of smaller subcontractors who operate with little wriggle room. “The need of subcontractors to complete big projects in time and on their tendered budget means margins can be prioritised over staff wellbeing,” said one insider with 30 years’ experience of the industry.

More than 50% of construction workers are self-employed, moreover, and at the whim of short-term, insecure project work.

Russell Stilwell runs his own company of 60 people. When a debt crunch and some personal setbacks combined to overwhelm him in 2010, he planned to take his own life.

“I knew how I was going to do it. I believed it was the right thing to do,” he said. He spent 18 months in the Priory recuperating and has several of his own workforce going through similar excruciation.

“There’s no wriggle room and you can’t expect people operating like this to take all the burden. Is there a consideration to the wellbeing of people delivering that? There needs to be something to prevent our industry from hurting itself.”

Measures are being taken. Hill says EDF, which is running the Hinkley Point project revealed to have a pressing mental health problem, is doing a lot to try to improve the situation.

“The industry is trying to change the culture, trying to ensure that no worker should be alone in a crisis,” he says. “We are trying to give all these people who are self-employed information and advice and guidance, a 24-hour helpline, getting mental health first aiders on site, giving people extra training and listening skills.”

Andy Stevens is another boss of a small building business who has considered ending it all. Of 10 people in his company, he says two are going through a tough time.

“It’s the pressure, the insecurity,” he says. “They say the stigma is easing up and more people are talking about it. But if you have a 6ft 4in, 16-stone, tattooed scaffolder suffering, he’s not going to come in and say: ‘I’m struggling.’”

A review into the 2018 collapse of the construction services company Carillion noted: “The government’s drive for cost savings can itself come at a price.”

That price is not just financial.

• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.