Safety Alert 160

Read why this Health and Safety Executive accident investigation was poignant.

While delivering a Directors and Managers Training session at a customer’s premises, our MD and Founder Karl Spencer highlighted Health and Safety roles and responsibilities that all people in their business have.This involved showing and talking through the specific sections in ‘The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and ‘The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999’ Karl then connected these Legislation Sections and Regulations with recent prosecutions from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) – Revealing a GAP in the Companies health and safety standards.

The HSE Investigation and successful prosecution

The positive outcome of showing these HSE prosecutions in the ‘Managers Meeting’, was the Directors and Managers saw first hand the result of poor health and safety management. For the financially biased managers, this HSE accident investigation and successful prosecution also revealed the financial risk of not meeting the required standards in health and safety.

The latest prosecution here from the HSE was poignant as the Company conducted work at heights. And when our MD asked, “Can you prove you have suitable and sufficient knowledge, information and training in place to repudiate a legal or civil claim?” heads turned, they looked at each other and shook their heads in unison – No, we couldn’t.

End Result of the Managers Training Session

The training session continued, and as the session ended, Karl left the Directors and Managers to collate their risk assessments, training records and competence assessments. The task was to see how much they could actually prove they were doing ‘So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable’. – As the Law requires.

Further support

To offer support and advice to anyone reading this blog, do not just ask the following questions:

• Do we have a risk assessment in place?
• Are all our workers trained and competent?
• Do we have a safe system of work in place?

You need to ask for proof. And if your like the Company above, you cannot prove it, then this needs to be number one on your Management To Do list.