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Dear Sirs
Welcome to our December edition of our
'Safety Matters'
newsletter. Again, we seemed to have had a lot of
calls over the past few weeks about circumstances that
need clarification as well as individual stories,
and hopefully this newsletter provides a
way of not only debunking some of the myths that
surround health & safety, but by using, where
appropriate actual questions and situations to
clarify what can be a maze of legislation and
responsibilities.
We hope that you find this newsletter useful and
informative, if however you have any questions about the
contents of the newsletter or require any
clarification on any of the points raised, please do not
hesitate to contact us on 08453 669933 or email us at info@SafetyServicesDirect.com. |
| No Christmas
Decorations! |
|
My boss
has told me that putting up Christmas Decorations this
year is too risky for Health & Safety reasons!
- Is he right?
No he is not! - Putting up Christmas
Decorations to celebrate the spirit of the festive
season is fine - Health and Safety considerations should
be given to the safety of any person that may be working
at height whilst putting up the decorations, ensuring
that they are sensible, not draping the decorations
around the office whilst standing on a table or
office chair or balancing off of a
bookcase! Make sure that you use an
appropriate step ladder and think carefully before you
stretch to put that last drawing pin in.
|
| I was just packing
away! |
|
Out parcel courier, Darren,
who has never been convinced of the value
of Health & Safety - has always had the
attitude, "its just common sense" came into the
office after a couple of weeks off with his arm in a
sling ....
The courier was working at home on a skylight over
his stairwell, he was replacing a catch before the wet
and windy weather came in. He carefully considered
the risks and had put reasonable control measures
in place to make sure that he did not fall - although he
might of wanted someone else to supervise! He had
finished the job and had packed all of his tools away,
to realise that he had not shut the skylight. As
he did not have the pole to hand, he balanced on the
balustrades and leaned towards the skylight ... just
before he fell, he effectively fell from ceiling height
down through the stairwell to the ground floor and
believed that he was unconscious for about 20 minutes
having severely banged his head and dislocated his
shoulder - he now realises that he was lucky not to
have broken his back or worse.
Think carefully before taking any risks - the
highest number of accidents happen when you are not
thinking they will, or when you think it will only take
a minute. Darren, after taking 2 weeks off work is
much more convinced of the importance of
safety! |
| Competent Health & Safety
Advice |
|
Rogue Traders are everywhere, charging an
arm and a leg - but they aren't competent ...
A new client of ours has told us about their use of
their book-keeper as their competent health & safety
advisors.
The book-keeper had charged a considerable
amount of money for services to our client, only for our
client to later discover that the information that had
been supplied to them was not only out-of-date but
totally inaccurate and inappropriate in its
content. He later discovered that
the book-keeper had no experience in health &
safety, but had just copied information that they had
been regurgitating for each of her clients on her
books for years. It is a legal requirement for all
organisations to have access to competent Health &
Safety Advice and that includes Book Keepers!
Anyone that provides health & safety
advice or prepares health and safety documentation
for you needs to be competent, not only in Health &
safety but ideally, in higher risk occupations such as
construction, they must also be competent in your field
as well. Usually they will be a Chartered or
Graduate member of IOSH and would be happy for you to
check their status by simply calling IOSH.
Additionally you need to check that they have
Professional Indemnity Insurance to cover Health &
Safety advice. Be sure who you are engaging as
ultimately you are responsible for your organisation's
health & safety, and you can even be prosecuted
for using someone who is not competent to provide the
advice and documentation that you
require! |
| Safety Advisory Service
(SAS) |
|
 Contractor Competence - How
competent are your sub-contractors?
We have recently introduced a competent contractor
scheme called 'Safety
Check' and we will shortly be
rolling this out to all organisations nationally.
All individuals and organisations that employ
sub-contractors have a legal duty to check the
competence of the contractors that they
use; failure to do so can potentially lead to
a prosecution or other enforcement action. As a
special introductory offer to all of our existing
SAS
customers we are offering this scheme at
a cost of £12.00 per contractor (exc.
VAT) for a limited period.
Further details of this scheme will be sent in a
separate flyer to all SAS
customers or alternatively call us on
08453 669933 for further
information. |
| Directors & Owners to be more Accountable
over Health & Safety |
|
New Guidance for
Directors Issued
 Company
directors are almost 300 times more likely to be
disqualified by a court from acting as a director for
financial reasons than for breaching health and safety
rules.
In response to this, the HSE is
now focusing on those responsible for ensuring that
adequate health and safety measures are being
implemented within the workplace. Ultimately this
means that senior managers, company directors and
company proprietors may each be held responsible for
the organisations health and safety failures.
In such situations, individuals may be prosecuted,
potentially facing a lengthy prison sentence and/or a
hefty fine.
To help
ensure that company directors, owners and managers are
aware of the role that they have, the HSE and
the Institute of Directors have jointly
published guidance information on Directors
Responsibilities. This guidance is available free
of charge and can be downloaded from the following web
page:
Directors
Responsibilities
Further
information and guidance can also be found on the HSE
Website by clicking on the following link:
With the
Corporate Manslaughter Act due to come into force in
April next year, the HSE are likely to start looking
more carefully at the role of individual managers,
directors and other employees within all
organisations. |
| Recent Court Cases |
|
 High
Street Chain Fined £150K for "Serious and
Deliberate" Asbestos
Breach
The High Street
retailer 'Blacks' has been ordered to pay a fine of
£150K after pleading guilty to breaching both s2(1) and
s3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Etc Act
1974.
In addition to the fine, Blacks was also
ordered to pay full costs of almost £15K,
after asbestos fibres were discovered in one of its 104
shops.
Blacks was was fined £75K on each charge for not
ensuring the safety of its employees and members of the
public.
Although the company had commissioned an asbestos
report, it had failed to ensure that recommendations
included in the report to manage the risks
were implemented.
HSE Warns
Employers of the Need for Proper Risk Assessments after
Maintenance Worker Dies
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE)
has warned organisations of the need to carry out proper
risk assessments for maintenance work. The warning
follows HSE's prosecution of an amusement park in
Southport after the death of a maintenance worker.
Pleasureland Ltd were recently fined £95K and
ordered to pay £50K costs at Liverpool Crown Court after
pleading guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health
and Safety etc Act 1974 and Regulation 3(1)(a) of
the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations
1999.
The death of the maintenance worker occurred while he
was lubricating a chair lift style cable ride, at the
amusement park in which he became entangled. When he
started to get into difficulty and needed the ride to be
immediately stopped, he was unable to contact his
colleague at the controls 200 metres away because his
radio was out of reach.
HSE Inspector Charles Cottle said: "This was a
terrible tragedy that could have been avoided had the
correct procedures been in place. This case graphically
illustrates that organisations should ensure that
safe working systems are in place for the safety of all
their employees. Managers should ask themselves three
questions - Do you know where maintenance staff go to do
their work? What do they do when they get there? Are
they safe while they are doing it?
With answers to these questions, organisations
are able to carry out a suitable assessment of the risk
and put in place safe procedures for carrying out
maintenance work.
Warehouse
Worker Paralysed by Toppling Pallet
A warehouse worker suffered spinal
injuries and was left dependent on a wheelchair after a
pallet fell on to him during stock picking.
Leeds Crown Court fined a
Birmingham company £40K and ordered it to pay
£10,480 in full costs after it pleaded guilty to a
breach of s2(1) of HSWA 1974 by failing to ensure its
employees' safety.
The employee was injured when
a pallet of insulation materials fell on to him from an
upper layer at the company's warehouse in
Leeds.
Investigations by Leeds City Council
revealed that the stacking of palletised materials and
picking procedures used by the company were responsible
for the incident. Suitable and sufficient risk
assessments had not been completed, individuals with
health and safety responsibilities had not been properly
trained, staff were not competent, and the company
had failed to take on board earlier warnings about the
inadequacy of its health and safety arrangements.
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