A WORKPLACE safety blitz will hit businesses in and around Southampton next week.

Forty health and safety experts will target 150 warehousing and distribution firms in a bid to highlight potential hazards to thousands of employees.

In the last five years more than 200 people in the area have been seriously injured while moving, storing and delivering goods and more than 800 have incurred injuries serious enough to keep them off work for more than three days.

Enforcement action has been promised over any flouting of the law.

Five local authorities in the Southampton area - Eastleigh, Fareham, New Forest, Southampton and Test Valley - and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are working in partnership on the campaign.

An HSE spokesman said: "With vehicles manoeuvring near people and the handling of the vast quantities of everything today's industry and consumers need, the potential for serious accidents is high.

"While the campaign will concentrate on sites handling large quantities of goods every day with correspondingly large numbers of vehicles movements and workers, it will also look at the smaller companies and deliveries to customers."

Of the major injuries reported locally, 29 per cent were from slips and trips, 25 per cent from falls from heights, 22 per cent from manual handling and eight per cent from workplace transport.