HSE has now confirmed that the ACoP which supports the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 will be removed along with an overhaul of many other ACoPs.

ACoPs are acknowledged to set the benchmark against which HSE judges the provisions made by industry and so have been very useful in the past serving as both a minimum standard and an example of turning legislation into practice.

However, all is not lost. The lost ACoP will be replaced by a new suite of guidance documents including the Health and Safety Made Simple Toolkit and the Health and Safety Toolbox, both of which are present already on the HSE website.

We can also look forward to seeing a new guidance document as the updated HSG65 – ‘Successful Health and Safety Management’ looks likely to be produced sometime late this summer.

So the answer to the question is yes, you are likely to be affected by this change, however, the new guidance promises to be more detailed and explicit in its content.  Expect to see samples of documents, risk assessments and similar documents, so although this is a change, it might just be a positive one.

Note: In addition to the above we can expect to see a simplification of the existing 5 documents covering the Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations 2002 as they are planned to be consolidated into a single document aiding their application, simplicity and, perhaps, their enforcement.

If you need help or advice on health and safety please contact us or request a call back – or call and speak to a friendly expert on 01453 800100.

Linked to our recent article on Fee for Intervention (FFI) we have heard that the HSE have been very active again on construction sites, particularly in the London region.

In all nearly 2,500 sites were visited and almost all of these were where refurbishment or repair works were in progress.

A total of 631 enforcement notices were served, 451 of which were prohibition notices  demanding that work be stopped immediately and until corrective action was taken. How many thousands of pounds were issues in fines under FFI remains unknown but given HSE’s slow start on the total of £37 million for the current period we would expect this to be in the tens of thousands.

High-risk activities, such as work at height, excavations, removal of asbestos, and so on plus site equipment, including its installation, assembly and maintenance arrangements will be checked on. One surprise addition was the issue and management of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) something which doesn’t always figure highly in an inspection but perhaps a pointer for the future as targets loom and need to be hit on FFI.

If you have a project running and would like to discuss how to best protect yourself against fee for intervention please contact us.  Similarly, if you have already been hit with a FFI fine and wish to appeal please contact one of our experts to assist you in the process.  Use the contact methods above or call us on 01453 800100.

If you need help or advice on health and safety please contact us or request a call back – or call and speak to a friendly expert on 01453 800100.

A new British standard provides key guidance for architects and others involved in design and the CDM process for minimising and controlling residual risk for work at height.

Working at height remains the biggest killer in the UK workplace and for that reason anything which helps to address the risks and remove them at the design stage must be a positive step worth supporting.

If you have the opportunity to attend we are involved in organising an event focusing on controlling work at height risk through our relationship with the WWT (Working Well Together campaign) our MD, Roger Hart is Treasurer of the South West WWT, book your place here; Work at height event, 3rd July 2013

Whilst its true to say that the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 already require that work at height risks are designed out at the planning stage, it cannot be said to have always worked in practice.

Although we accept that the demands of clients and aesthetics must be met, further measures are justified and we hope that the publication of a new British Standard will help; BS 8560:2012 Code of Practice for the Design of Buildings Incorporating Safe Work at Height.

The Code of Practice addresses the basic hierarchies of design ideas, ranked from most to least desirable, plus summary information about the constraints and limitations of various practical solutions such as a lamp requiring replacement.  In this case, access by Mobile Elevating Work Platforms (scissor or booms) is addressed with reminders to design in adequate access routes for the equipment and ensure the installed flooring can withstand their considerable weight.

Using the guide designers must consider; “the extent, nature, duration and frequency of work to be done at height, so that appropriate equipment and techniques for use in construction, cleaning, maintenance and repair can be identified”. This must also be done at an early stage enabling conflicts between proposed equipment or work methods and other factors are more easily resolved.

Design teams are encouraged to seek input from the client’s facilities manager and others such as the construction contractor at the planning stage. Something which was always present within the CDM Regulations and which a good CDM Coordinator should try to ensure but an element which is still missing from too many projects.

If you need help or advice on health and safety please contact us or request a call back – or call and speak to a friendly expert on 01453 800100.

Welfare on construction sites has been an issue very close to the heart of HSE for a number of years and with good reason.  A worker on a construction site should be able to expect a reasonable standard of welfare provision.  When this comes to exposure to the substances used this becomes even more important and there is a tendency amongst staff to be dismissive of the requirements despite the nature of concrete being quite hazardous – burns from concrete can be severe and not felt at the time of exposure.

Inadequate provision for welfare on construction sites leads to prosecution and fine

We listened with interest during a recent IOSH webinar on Corporate Manslaughter / Corporate Homicide.  It feels that in the talks we run for clients at our breakfast and lunch clubs I’ve been talking about little else since the act was introduced and Cotswold Geotech faced the first prosecution.

At the time talk was of how one person / company must be first and that the legislation needed to the tested before moving on to larger game.  Something mentioned in the webinar changed this.

We have always spoken about major disasters and how, in the past, the many layers of management within the businesses responsible for Zeebrugge and Hatfield made it impossible for them to face prosecution as a ‘controlling mind’could not be found – what wasn’t so clear at that stage was that this test was never fully removed.

There are currently 141 cases opened and 56 prosecutions ongoing, almost all against very small businesses.  Further, in almost all cases the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has also charged both the company and individuals with health and safety offences under HASWA (S.37 and similar).

Given the rhetoric before the Act was introduced the current situation seems bizarre.  An Act which was written to address the imbalance between large and small businesses which retained the crucial Achilles heel of the old legislation and a new piece of legislation which does much the same job as the existing but with much higher fines (a minimum of £500,000 in fines) which can only be applied effectively against small businesses.

It leads you to question who wrote the legislation and for what purposes?  Its true to say that it has brought health and safety into sharper focus for most large businesses but in terms of their being brought to book for serious failings… well, the jury is still out.

If you need help or advice on health and safety please contact us or request a call back – or call and speak to a friendly expert on 01453 800100

It doesn’t seem like three years have passed since the governments last budget review in 2010 but that time is here again and HSE is likely to be facing further budget cuts.

I can hear readers thinking ‘why should we be worried about that?’ and its a fair question but the impacts of further reductions in the HSE budget are likely to be felt by all of us as the regulator adapts to its new role as an enforcement agency with the power to collect fines.

The relationship between those who are regulated by HSE and the executive was changed by the introduction of Fee For Intervention (FFI) last October.  It’s simply not possible to maintain this same relationship whilst charging a client £124 per hour.  Similarly, it affects the old partnerships between clients and HSE where a partnership has been established over years of careful actions building trust between regulator and regulated.

By way of example, you would have to wonder now at the logic of asking an inspector to visit with the hope of gleaning some advice and information to improve safety management.  Surely an Inspector must treat all of those regulated in the same manner, if this is true then any material breach which comes to light must then be handled under FFI, turning an innocent enquiry with the best intentions into something which will start to strip away the budget for beneficial change as the FFI charges begin.

We are aware that a great many within HSE remain uncomfortable with their new position as regulator and money collector but its no longer possible for Inspectors to resist the momentum of FFI, its become part of the working processes and targets must be reached if budgets are to be balanced and colleagues jobs secured.

Reference to our earlier post in March of this year gives the statistics on the acceleration of the FFI Scheme; HSE’s FFI Scheme starts to accelerate, refurbishment, solar PV / renewables and contracting to be hardest hit this can only continue as budgets are pared.

Beyond this, we will soon approach the anniversary of the introduction of FFI, at that point it seems very likely that the target (currently £37m each year) and the hourly chargeable rate (currently £124) will both rise.

If you need help or advice on health and safety please contact us or request a call back – or call and speak to a friendly expert on 01453 800100.

FREE Working Well Together Event:  Snakes and Ladders (Considering Working at Height)

This is one of a series of free partnership events run by the industry for the industry, as part of the UK-wide Working Well Together (WWT) campaign.

This event will look at working at height – how to do it safely and the reasons why.  The vent is key to those working at height including electrical installers, building maintenance engineers, facilities management specialists, steel frame erectors, roofers, solar panel installers, renewables companies, wind turbine installers and similar.

The South West Working Well Together group are pleased to introduce keynote speaker Jason Anker.

Jason was paralysed due to an avoidable incident on a building site many years ago when he fell off an unsecured ladder. He was 24 years old. Jason speaks on the emotional perspective of why Health and Safety is not just about ticking boxes and highlights the importance of listening to key behavioural safety messages when working on site.

Jason’s story is really about being at rock bottom, having the determination to pick yourself up, change direction in life and then trying to make a difference to others. www.jasonankerlive.co.uk

Agenda  BOOK NOW!

WWT campaign reserves the right to amend this programme

REGISTRATION opens at 08.00 with TEA/COFFEE AND BACON ROLL
The start time is 08.30 and the event will be finished by approximately 12.00

• Considering all aspects of working at height Derek Purchase, Outsource Safety Ltd
• Safe use of harnesses and the importance of a rescue plan
• How it all goes wrong Simon Chilcott HSE Inspector of Construction
• COFFEE AND CAKE BREAK
• A real life story of the devastating impact of a work place incident that should never have happened Jason Anker
• Q & A, Summary and CLOSE

This event is free to attend and all refreshments will be provided free of charge.

If you’ve got questions or need support on safety in the industrial, contracting or construction sectors please contact us for sensible and proportionate advice on 01453 800100

Strict liability, sometimes called absolute liability, is the legal responsibility for damages, or injury, even if the person or company found strictly liable was not at fault or negligent.  It has been an integral part of health and safety legislation but something which the governments red tape review has hoped to change.

Employers complain that they are liable beyond the measure of common sense, even if they have acted reasonably they are still at fault. Insurers also dislike the current situation as it increases the likelihood of a payout on the policy even when a good client takes all reasonable measures to control their risk.

The Government appears to have won the battle to overhaul the law that makes employers liable to pay compensation to injured employees if they have breached statutory health and safety duties.

This amendment to the wide-ranging Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill is just one of a number of Government reforms aimed at addressing the perception of a compensation culture and to reduce employers’ fear of being sued.

Viscount Younger of Leckie commented

“it is not reasonable or fair that employers should be held liable to pay compensation when they have done nothing wrong and taken all reasonable steps to protect their employees”, and stressed that the reform “does not undermine core health and safety standards”.

Whilst we have sympathy with employers we must always ensure that injured persons have the right to adequate compensation when an accidents occurs, but there is a balance to be found.  We feel that the review of current legislation is likely to replace many current instances of strict liability with the “reasonably practicable” wording as an alternative.  This simple change will have much the same effect but avoid the hammer blow of complete removal.

If you have questions on this subject and how it may affect your business please contact us, we’re here to help and talk is not just cheap its free on 01453 800100