Merton Council is congratulating council employee John Murphy who has been awarded an MBE in the 2011 New Year’s Honour list.

Announced on New Years Eve, John has been awarded an MBE for services to health and safety in the construction industry.

John has worked for the London Borough of Merton as the full-time manager of CHAS (the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme) for the last seven years. Prior to this John managed the councils safety, emergency and risk management sections while at the same time developing CHAS.

John is widely acknowledged as the main developer of the CHAS scheme, taking it from what was originally a London based scheme to what is now the largest scheme of its type in Europe with over 450 client users and over 37,000 registered contractors and consultants.

John was also the founder member chair (now past chair) of the Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) competence forum. Here John has been heavily involved with colleagues from the construction industry and the HSE to increase the mutual recognition between a number of the major health and safety prequalification schemes which have helped bring huge savings in time and resources to the construction industry.

John will be collecting his honour on 11 May. He said:

“I’m absolutely thrilled about receiving this honour and feel incredibly proud to be recognised for the work that has been achieved through CHAS which started here in Merton. It is not a cliché to say that this award could not have been made without the support, hard work and commitment of the CHAS team.’

Merton Council Leader, Councillor Stephen Alambritis said:

” Congratulations to John on this incredible achievement. To build the CHAS scheme from scratch to the huge success it is today is something that only someone with real passion and determination could do, and John has done it. He absolutely deserves this recognition and has really done himself and Merton very proud.”