Health and Safety Myths in the UK

In 2008 the Prime Minister David Cameron wrongly told the Tory party conference that monstrous health and safety legislation meant that teachers were unable to apply a plaster to a child’s grazed knee without contacting a first aid officer. Despite it being untrue, it highlighted for many the ridiculous nature of some health and safety legislation, and how it was impacting our ability to live free and responsible lives. The people of Lewes have burnt effigies of health and safety officers at their annual bonfire night. Health and safety officers, it seems, are public enemy number one.

Image used under a creative commons license courtesy of World Economic Forum on Flickr

The point is that teacher’s need to know whether a child is allergic to plasters. If this is the case, it is likely to be rare and easy to remember. As long as the teacher can be sure the student isn’t allergic to plasters they can clean a cut or graze and apply a plaster without the fear of prosecution. It’s just one of many health and safety myths which exist in the UK, and something which the government’s Health and Safety Executive is attempting to debunk. Ridiculous health and safety situations arise often, but these are seldom the result of legislation itself, more of ill-informed health and safety officers who can make stupid recommendations in attempt to protect themselves and over-interpret the law.

Recently South West Trains health and safety officers had to “climb down” over instructing train station managers not to water plants using a ladder. The hanging baskets were 6ft in the air and for months the managers have been forbidden from reaching them using the ladder, thanks to over-sensitive health and safety officers. After receiving some publicity, South West Trains admitted there had been a “misunderstanding” and that using the ladders was OK.

Image used under a creative commons license courtesy of Montpelier on Flickr

Each winter in the UK, we hear about how health and safety rules mean that homeowners cannot clear the snow and ice from the pavements outside their home. If someone were to fall on a cleared piece of payment the person who had cleared would be culpable, or so goes the story. This is another myth which the HSE is keen to debunk. It clearly states on the DirectGov site that “anyone can clear snow and ice from the pavement outside their home or public spaces to prevent slips and falls”, and even provides a useful guide on how to do this safely.

Those in the know agree; it’s not legislators who are to blame for health and safety atrocities, but the health and safety officer who over-interpret the law, being deliberately cautious to cover their own back. As David Cameron put it “everyone’s so worried about being sued that they event lots of their own rules on top of the regulations that already exist”, arguing that the status quo “stifles judgement, personal initiative and responsibility”. These ideas work on the basis that the general public should be considered irresponsible and devoid of good judgement. They prevent people from being able to take responsibility for their own actions.

The situation has got so ridiculous that the Health and Safety Executive site has been listing its top health and safety myths in a “myth of the month” section. As they say, over-protective health and safety rules “trivialise the true purpose of health safety: protecting people from real risks”. Among their favourite health and safety myths are ones associated with Christmas; that children are banned from having snowball fights, office workers being told they can’t erect Christmas decorations, performers banned from throwing sweets to audience members, coins banned from Christmas puddings and Christmas lights needing to be PAT-tested annually. It’s important to draw a line of distinction between health and safety regulation and the over-protective ideas which health and safety officers attempt to enforce.

Alan Cairns writes on a number of subjects including health and safety, cherry picker hire and platform lifts.

Lapse in Standards Lands Gas Fitter 3 Years in Jail

The life of Zoe Anderson was tragically cut short after she was overcome by carbon monoxide in her bathroom in 2010. In the two weeks prior to her death Andrew Hartley, a gas fitter from Somerset worked on the boiler in the property Miss Anderson was staying in which belonged to her father.  Although Judge Neil Ford QC acknowledged that there wasn’t any hostile intention in the work carried out by Mr Hartley the defendant was sentenced to three years after being found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence.

Flue Pipe Was Not Correctly Installed

The case took two weeks and came after Mr Hartley has already been prosecuted for breaching gas safety regulations where he pleaded guilty. Mr Hartley installed a brand new boiler in the property in December 2010. The experienced gas fitter felt he had installed the flue correctly; however he had failed to secure it with screws causing the flue to slip.  This was a botch job seemingly carried out in a hurry that resulted in carbon monoxide leaking from the flue pipe and into the property.

It was believed that Miss Anderson slipped and bumped her head when her body was discovered by her boyfriend. However tests showed that carbon monoxide poisoning was the cause and so an investigation was carried out and Mr Hartley has been forthcoming with the police, feeling guilty for the loss of life and admitting his errors.

A Warning for Tradesmen

A detective who led the investigation stated that although Mr Hartley did not intentionally cause the death of Miss Anderson the sentence was simply to reflect the severity of the failings in the work and to serve as a message to all other tradesmen to ensure they are aware of the duty they have to their customers. The case has also shown that carbon monoxide is a serious danger to life and the importance of using carbon monoxide detectors in all properties to help detect any leakages.

By law anyone who works on gas appliances needs to be registered with the Gas Safe Register. In order to be accepted on the register engineers need to show they have expertise in their field, have qualifications and also have certificates to prove they are competent when working with gas.  Everyone on the Gas Safe register must go through tests every five years to show they still have the skills required to work with gas.

One Error Can Lead to Loss of Life

In this incident Mr Hartley was on the register and he had many years’ worth of excellent service to his customers. This one lapse led to the loss of life of Miss Anderson and although Mr Hartley pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act relating to gas appliances he felt that he was not guilty of manslaughter. He said that he tested the gas boiler and left it working properly after being tested. However because the screws were missing from the flue he was found guilty.

If you are a gas fitter or a landlord you must take gas seriously.  Health and Safety Consultants may be able to help you with their health and safety services and inform you of your duties relating to the law. Call 0800 1488 677 for further help and information.

Myths in Health and Safety That You Shouldn’t Believe

From time to time the news is filled with health and safety myths which cause everyone to react.  Although it is not always clear where these rumours start it is possible to dispel some of the most common ones which are often believed but are in no way required by law.  Here are some of the most commonly believed myths and the facts behind them.

Hanging baskets are banned

There has never been a law banning hanging baskets. The origin of this myth stems from a town in the UK removing their hanging baskets back in 2004. They feared that the lamppost holding the baskets were too old and could collapse under the strain. However after an inspection it was decided that the hanging baskets could go back up.

Park Benches Need to Be Replaced If they are too Low

This is another myth with no truth behind it. A facility manager decided to replace all of the benches once which were considered to be three inches too low. There are not set requirements in place determining how high benches need to be.

Flip-Flops Are Banned from the Workplace

This is a false statement as there is no law in health and safety which dictates that flip flops or sandals cannot be worn to work. The problem with this myth is that if you work in a place where the floors can be wet or dirty flip flops would not be suitable, choose a shoe with a much better grip that fits well to avoid slips and falls.

Pin the Tail on the Donkey is Forbidden

The game of pin the tail on the donkey was thought to be considered a health and safety risk resulting on parents banning it from party games.  The use of a small pin in a game doesn’t seem to be too risky and it certainly isn’t considered to be a risk. Feel free to include this traditional game in your next party.

Christmas Decorations are Not Permitted in the Workplace

Companies are banning their staff from putting up Christmas decorations for no reason. This is not banned and not considered to be a risk, and there is no need for the decorations to be put up by a qualified person. Staff should be supplied with ladders which are suitable rather than balancing on inappropriate objects though.

Conkers is No Longer Allowed in Schools Unless Goggles are Worn

Playing the game of conkers was thought to be banned after a head teacher made their students wear goggles to play the game. After this incident many head teachers banned the innocent game fearing it was a health and safety risk. However, conkers can be played without wearing any kind of safety gear. The problem with conkers comes when kids hit each other with them, and this is a time for discipline not health and safety action.

With many myths being published online and in the papers it is sometimes worth investigating the truth before jumping to conclusions. Health and Safety consultants can help you to eliminate the myths in the workplace, so if you have any concerns contact them on 0800 1488 677 for assistance.

Health and Safety Laws Apply to All Businesses

If you are an employer or work for yourself you must be aware that you are completely responsible for the health and safety in your business. In order to reduce the risks posed to you and your employees there are precautions you should follow and health and safety laws to ensure everyone stays safe from dangers.  Here are just four duties to follow and work on as an employer.

Place a Competent Person in Charge of Your Health and Safety

If you are an employer you need to make sure that you have appointed a competent person to deal with the health and safety duties. This person must be experienced and have the correct skills for the role.  You can choose more than one person for the role and it could be yourself, your workers or someone you bring in from outside your company.  If you do not have anyone in your workforce with the correct skills you could either get them trained or use the competent person services offered by health and safety consultants.

Create a Health and Safety Policy

Managing your health and safety through procedures and policies is a great way to keep everything under control. You need to write down and describe your health and safety with clear details concerning who is responsible for what, when they need to act and how they act. For businesses with more than five employees it is essential to have a written policy. You must follow what you have written and your employees must also be aware of the contents and follow it too. Reviewing your health and safety policy regularly is essential, especially if you bring in new machinery, additional staff, create new roles or introduce new methods of work.

Create Workplace Risk Assessments

Workplace Risk assessments are used to help work around hazards in a safe and effective way. You can create risk assessments for jobs where hazards are involved and these should be created before work starts.  Identify your hazards and speak to employees to see if they are aware of any dangers you may have missed.  Go over the methods you currently use to prevent accidents and eliminate the hazards and try to find ways of solving any problems where no procedures are in place. Businesses should record their risk assessments even if they have fewer than five employees although it is not legally required.

Communication and Training

Talking to your employees about their concerns and experiences of health and safety in the workplace can help to improve health and safety. Listen to their concerns and try to come up with solutions to any hazards and problems you are made aware of. Likewise you should communicate your policies, risk assessments and what you expect from them.

Give your employees, contractors or self-employed people working for you clear guidelines and appropriate training on how to work without risks.  Provide information on the hazards and risks faced in their working environment and duties, the measures in place to deal with the risks and the emergency procedures they may need to follow. Employees should not pay for their own training and you should make sure the training is providing within their typical working hours. Health and safety services provide training for businesses that are unable to provide it themselves.

Health and Safety Audit? These tips will help you keep above the bar

This should be the first thing you do! Management with previous experience with legislation compliance should be amongst your ideal candidates. Arrange quarterly reports from them to ensure that they are working efficiently. Now you have some accountability in place, you can take a look around for any obvious infractions.

Toilets, drinking water, changing rooms and eating areas all fall under the welfare section of the workplace health and safety act. Ensure that drinking water is provided from a clean and regularly refilled container.
Sanitary conveniences and washing facilities should be able to easily service the capacity of your workforce. For example, one cubicle is not enough for a business with 100 or so employees. Are these facilities constantly packed with large queues? This should be taken into consideration in addition to the effectiveness of your cleaning staff, take a UV light to your washroom facilities to check if all precautions are being taken to eliminate the residual of biological waste.

Even though the probability of electrical failure is miniscule, keeping all of your mains powered electronic devices PAT tested is essential with legislation compliance, especially when these devices are coming in contact with the public. The condition of your property should be monitored to ensure that it has the appropriate stability and solidity for use.
Floors and “traffic routes” should be kept clear and clean by your staff, most accidents tend to occur in high traffic areas, so your health and safety representative should take careful note of these spots. Most of this part is simply common sense, as it doesn’t take a genius to note a dangerous area. Make sure all potentially hazardous materials are marked, and your employees are aware about their placement.

The health part of the legislation is mostly common sense. Are your employees working in an acceptable environment? Is there fresh, clean air being ventilated in your workplace? Is your ventilation solution providing an acceptable, cool environment for your employees to function properly? The legislation states that workplaces should be at least 16 °C; if the work involves physical effort it should be at least 13 °C (Unless other laws require lower temperatures).

Lighting should be sufficient to enable people to work and move around safely. Room dimensions and space should be sufficient for the number of employees working on the property. A lot of these can be worked out by simply looking around and talking to employees about any unsafe or unsavoury conditions.

I hope that this has been a relatively simple way of looking at this legislation, use your common sense and have your health and safety representative study the appropriate materials, they are not lengthy, and can prove to be advantageous in the wellbeing of your employees.

Jennifer is a health and safety consultant providing business with clear strategies to combat workplace accidents and the associated risks. For more information on washroom services Nottingham and other aspects relating to this article such as clinical waste disposal then please visit City Healthcare.

Worker Trapped at Leisure Park

An employee at the Dawlish holiday Park, Lady’s Mile Farm, suffered terrible injuries when he became trapped while working in a trench. Grzezgorz Waluszowski had been asked to help with laying one of the drainage pipes in a trench. While he was in the two meter deep trench the sides collapsed trapping him inside.

No Adequate Safety Measures in Place and a Lack of Planning

Other people working on the trench were able to help dig Mr Waluszowski out of the caved in trench however he had fractured his skull, his cheekbone and his jaw.  When the Health and Safety Executive paid a visit to the park they discovered that they had good reason to prosecute the operators, Main Gate Leisure. The inspectors discovered that there was no adequate planning in place for the work of laying the new drainage pipe, and no safety measures were in place to prevent the accident from occurring.

Mr Waluszkowski not only worked at the park, he lived there too. On the day of the accident he was working with two of the directors of the park’s operators. In order to try and prevent the trench from caving in some pieces of plywood were propping up a metal plate and some wood was placed between the sides in order to help hold them up. Unfortunately this was not effective and the whole support system collapsed causing the sides to cave in. The directors present used an excavator on site in order to reach Mr Waluszkowski and help to get him out which the managed to do before the emergency services arrived.

Main Gate Leisure Limited was prosecuted at Torquay Magistrates court where they pleaded guilty for breaching Regulation 31(1) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations. The company have to pay a fine of £5,000 and they were also ordered to pay £2,198 in court costs.

After the hearing Jonathan Harris, a Health and Safety Executive spoke to the press. He said that the accident could have easily resulted in a fatality. This highlights the importance of thorough planning and the need to have proper safety measures in place. The support used to prop up the sides of the trench was clearly not suitable; a trench box can be hired with ease and would have prevented the caving in of the trench.

Make Use of a CDM Coordinator

Using the health and safety services offered by specialists is a great way of helping to prevent accidents such as these occurring in your workplace. If you work with health and safety consultants it is possible to make use of CDM Coordinator Services that are able to help companies conform with the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007. The experienced consultant will be able to help you in a variety of ways including but not limited to:

• Risk Management
• Administration
• Health and Safety and the Design Process

Call 0800 1488 677 to speak to health and safety consultants about their CDM Coordinator service or one of the many other useful services available.

Human Resources: The Cost of Tribunals

In the changing world of the 21^st Century, the shape of the workplace is changing to reflect the changing society and its norms and behaviours.

Blame society

British society has increasingly begun to reflect its counterpart US society where blame and automatic questions of compensation and responsibility are banded around. Walk down any UK large High Street and you are likely to meet someone who is trying to get your business in respect of a claim, maybe even going back many years. People are even solicited by the use of SMS on their mobile phones or cold calls to their home phones. The reality is that the UK is become more and more blame conscious and this is reflected in work environments.

In the not too distant past employees were grateful for a job and all that meant for them: financial security, challenge and career fulfilment. Today we see increasing numbers of employees who feel they are owed the opportunity to earn money and crucially feel they have the upper hand in the employer employee relationship. Clearly this is not the case but perceptually it is very much the case to them. Right from the point of recruitment there (quite rightly) an expectation that things will be done correctly, with fairness and equality being paramount as well as finding the correct candidate for the role. Commonly Employment Tribunals will receive complaints from individuals whose perception is that they were not treated with fairness and will have a reason or a number of reasons as to why they were not chosen as the right candidate on the day. Thus having robust tried and tested recruitment procedures in place is a must for any employer of people.

The Welfare of Workers

Managing the working environment is an area frequently neglected, particularly in lower risk sectors. Managing risk is a non negotiable when people are involved. As their knowledge increases surrounding their rights and the organisation’s responsibilities, so the trends in claims against companies unsurprisingly also does the same.

Conducting workplace risk assessments and taking action to reduce the risks identified may feel like a bureaucratic waste of precious time but your responsibility to your workforce is actually one of any organisation’s biggest responsibilities. Larger companies frequently offer medical assessments and support for employees who have a highlighted area of concern. As much as a business has a responsibility to its staff so the staff have a responsibility to their employer. To protect your own business you need to know of any problems with employees that could impact health and safety for themselves, their colleagues or the wider business. Support for employees displaying issues for concern can be provided support by a number of external bodies, for example the Coalition Against Drug Abuse might help an employee sober up and return to work. Bear in mind that any periods of sickness due to accidents or longer term medical ailments will impact on the business’s productivity as business work leaner and meaner and cuts workforces to minimum requirements, absences become harder to manage.

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Grievances against colleagues

Having a grievance procedure is a very important use of time and resource. While an employer can control the company’s decisions around how to treat employees and manage the People Agenda to minimise risk, it is far harder to legislate for the behaviour of individual members of staff, yet their behaviour remains the business’s responsibility.  Any workforce will be made up of a number of types of people, with different lifestyles, backgrounds and opinions. It is crucial therefore that a business legislates for colleagues who may conduct themselves inappropriately and set out information around how this behaviour will be dealt with.  If an employee has a complaint to make against a colleague, it must be clear as to how this is carried out and there can be no repercussions for any individual raising a complaint. An investigation process must be clearly laid out and appropriate action as required should be taken against any parties found to be guilty of misconduct.

Tribunals and Complaints

Violating employment legislation can be a costly error to make. Where unions are involved to represent the worker it can also spell industrial action and loss of productivity for prolonged periods of time.

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Tribunal costs can run into thousands of pounds in compensation per case depending on the severity of the case. Most types of claim have an associated maximum award and bands of award reflecting the severity of the breach. It is noteworthy that the highest levels of compensation are often awarded for harassment and discrimination cases and these are uncapped. In January 2012 a reported £4.5 million award was made for one such case. The number of claims submitted to UK Employment Tribunals is ever increasing (between March 2010 – March 2011 by around a fifth according to HM Courts and Tribunals Service).

A major defence to liability in any type of claim is showing that your company was not negligent. Training and educating the workforce to take preventative steps is crucial and for any business employing people and wishing to remain viable, training and educating is non negotiable.