Most of us use the services of an insurance company not just for our insurance needs but also to carry out thorough inspections, tests and examinations of the plant, equipment and machinery which we have within the business, typically forklift trucks.

In a situation such as this imagine that the insurance inspector identifies that one of the trucks has a serious defect with its lifting chains making it unsafe to use. The inspector contacted you and advised that it needed to be taken out of service immediately pending corrective work.

A few days after the visit by the insurance assessor, you are then contacted by your local HSE office. They had been told of the faults with the forklift truck and wanted to know what was being done about it.

Why did the insurer reported this?

Regulation 10 of the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations states that the competent person completing the statutory inspection must do the following:

“Where there is in his opinion a defect in the lifting equipment involving an existing or imminent risk of serious personal injury, send a copy of the report as soon as is practicable to the relevant enforcing authority.”

Technically, the competent person completing the inspection should always tell you that they need to report the defects to the HSE but this doesn’t always happen. So we would suggest that if you are informed that any item of equipment or plant has a serious defect, ask whether it’s serious enough to be reported to the HSE or other any other authority.

Whilst its true that you can’t stop the report from being made, you can take steps to demonstrate that the truck was taken out of service immediately, that you have commissioned a company to complete the works required, and systems have been put into place to help prevent this happening again.

Remember

Your plant, equipment and machinery should be under a regime of regular maintenance to make sure that they can’t get into a condition whereby a serious defect report would need to be made in the first place.  Review your recent reports and if you find that serious reports have been brought up before then re-examine your current maintenance arrangements.

Most businesses use agency staff at some point.  Whether to cover a longer term absence, cope with an upturn in business or to cover a the absence of a key worker.

Naturally, the person who is employed to carry out this role has a right to expect a safe workplace and you, as an employer, have a duty of care towards them.  But what of the employment agency?  How can you share the risk of employment and what should your agency be doing to help you manage the risk?

Read on for an interesting update of what should be happening and what you can do to share the burden of risk management.

The Employment Agency Standards (EAS) inspectorate has reported that eleven out of twelve employment agencies it investigated were failing in their health and safety duties.  If you do use agencies you should be aware that they share the burden of good health and safety with you and must play their role to ensure that their staff are safe whilst working on your premises.

The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 (CEAEBR) clearly sets out the safeguards which should be in place. In total, the investigation found evidence of 57 infringements. Of particular concern were the breaches of the CEAEBR health and safety requirements. These state that an employment agency may not, “introduce or supply a work-seeker to a hirer unless the agency or employment business has obtained sufficient information from the hirer”. Specifically, the agency must identify from the hirer “any risks to health or safety and the steps the hirer has taken to prevent or control such risks”.

If you’re using employment agencies:

• Supply your agency with copies of relevant risk assessments.
• Set out details of the experience, training, qualifications and any particular authorisations required.
• Remind the agency of their legal responsibility under the CEAEBR to pass on the information about the risks of the job and to check that the workers they supply will meet all of your requirements.
• Ask them to sign to confirm that they have fulfilled all of these responsibilities.