What are your legal obligations as an employer when staff are exposed to UV radiation? The Health and Safety at Work Act makes it clear that there is a legal duty on every employer to ensure, as far as reasonably practical, the health of their employees. It also says that employers must provide “information, instruction,…
Read more
HSE often attends sites which have been reported as dangerous by members of the public. In fact, we hear of these visits quite regularly and they can be as a result of genuine concerns or perhaps as a result of noise, dust and other disturbances causes nuisance to neighbours. The case below relates to a…
Read more
Many construction site managers may remember hearing a statistic being talked about on past training courses that one person a month dies just walking past a construction site, it often forms part of the CITB Site Managers Safety Training Course This statistic has been brought tragically to life by an accident which occurred in Hanover…
Read more
Temporary works are an area where greater focus on safety is required. Some confusion can still exist over who takes responsibility for these areas and risks can sometimes be underestimated. The case above involved the construction of a foundation for a large steel structure as part of the foundation for a pressure test facility at…
Read more
Both the building owner and the contractor they employed to demolish a structure have received heavy fines following safety failings which led to an uncontrolled collapse onto a high street in November 2013 and the CDM Client fined £160,000. It is a requirement of CDM 2007 (now replaced by CDM 2015) that a construction CDM…
Read more
Occupational Road Risk – The Journey With roadways becoming more congested, concern about the impact of diesel on the environment, roadworks that seem to go on and on, with risk based arrangements in place to calm traffic through road developments, the challenge for planning travel by road for companies, so they remain cost effective, whilst…
Read more
There have been more instances of tele-handlers and dumpers overturning on construction sites with often tragic consequences. These days we have trained operators and good site traffic management on most sites we see but in spite of this we are still seeing too many overturns. This gave use cause to think and discuss this in…
Read more
You may recall a national story regarding a viewing which went horribly wrong when a lady fell into a well within the properties garden. The local estate agent, Strakers (Holdings) Ltd was showing the house to Mr and Mrs Driver and they were told to look around the grounds on arrival. In the garden Mrs…
Read more
As an employer you have the duty to assess the risks to Health, Safety and Welfare of all persons in your employment and also to those not actually in your employment but entering your premises – members of the public or visitors to your site. You have diligently carried out your work place risk assessments,…
Read more
HSE now has a policy of ‘looking beyond the garden gate’ in construction accidents. in this particular case the directors of a roofing business, and also the director of the business which contracted this work out to them, have seen custodial sentences (see our earlier blog for another example of this type of prosecution: Directors…
Read more