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Written by
on 22 September 2011

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It is important to respond to any of the suggestions that are provided to you by your health and safety consultants.  Just enquiring into improving your health and safety procedures and policies is simply not enough.  In a similar vein it is essential that if you have been given any notices from the Health and Safety Executive then you need to act on them to avoid prosecution.

Notices are given as a way of a warning to companies in the UK.  The Health and Safety Executive plan unannounced visits to check out workers up and down the country.  This allows them to see normal day to day activities of employers and employees as they carry out their usual working methods.   If you are served with an improvement notice on one of these visits it is then your responsibility to make changes.

Building Site Manager Ignores Improvement Notices

In a recent case a Cardiff building site manager was given two Improvement Notices after a surprise visit from the HSE inspectors. Mr Zamen who trades as Pride Builders was working on two properties in Cathays.  The inspectors discovered that there were not enough adequate safety procedures in place for working at height.  There were additional problems with the asbestos training as well as structural problems discovered by the inspectors.

The Improvement notices that were served to Mr Zaman allowed him time to make the necessary changes by a set date, in this case that date was May 10 2011. Unfortunately Mr Zaman did not comply with the notices and therefore the Health and Safety Executive had no other option than to prosecute.

Mr Zaman pleaded guilty in court to breaching two sections of the Health and Safety at Work Act. He was given a fine of £1280 and ordered to pay the additional court costs of £1500 and £15 as a victim extra.

Notices Must Be Complied With to Avoid Prosecution

If you have been served with notices from the HSE then you should consider yourself lucky to be given a chance to improve the working environment.  If you act on the notices then you can avoid prosecution, a fine and the bad reputation that comes from being fined by the HSE.

If you are not sure about what you can do to adhere to the notices then it is advisable that you make contact with health and safety consultants.  They will be able to advise you on the best health and safety services to take and provide you with those services.

Some of the areas where Health and Safety consultants could have helped Mr Zaman are:

Simple health and safety services such as these would have helped the site manger to avoid prosecution.  More importantly it would have educated the manager and his employees on health and safety issues and made sure that all of their future work was carried out in a safe and professional manner.  Call 0800 1488 677 to find out how the health and safety consultants can transform your working environment.

About 

A chartered (fellow) safety and risk management practitioner with 20+ years of experience. David provides a healthy dose of how-to articles, advice and guidance to make compliance easier for construction professionals, Architects and the built environment. Get social with David on Twitter and Linkedin.

A chartered (fellow) safety and risk management practitioner with 20+ years of experience. David provides a healthy dose of how-to articles, advice and guidance to make compliance easier for construction professionals, Architects and the built environment. Get social with David on Twitter and Linkedin.

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