Latest News from Bravanark.co.uk

HSE LAUNCH NEW LEAFLETS

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:29:46 GMT

HSE Construction Division has created some new, simple, straightforward guidance for busy builders who run small construction sites. The leaflets show real examples of good and unacceptable practice on site.

1. Running a small site

2. Manual Handling

3. Roof work

4. Welfare

Click on tiltle to open document and save to your PC

Info from HSE

HSE Release CoSHH Advice

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:55:43 GMT

The HSE has released new advice to small businesses relating to CoSHH

A new leaflet produced by the HSE entitled ‘Working with Substances Hazardous to Health’ has been written mainly for employers in small businesses to help them meet their specific duties under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (CoSHH) Regulations.

It is an easy to use guide which centres on dealing with hazardous chemicals at work, so that they do not cause ill health to employees as well as information on CoSHH assessment. The guide was actually produced with input from small businesses including hairdressers and construction workers. It is intended to provide updated chemicals advice to smaller businesses in a language that makes it easier to comprehend and follow.

If you are running a small business or are self employed, you will need this guide to make sure you are protecting your employees. Most businesses use substances, or products that are mixtures of substances. Every year, thousands of workers become ill due to hazardous substances.

This leaflet gives guidance on working safely with a variety of substances, from metalworking fluids which can grow bacteria and fungi and cause dermatitis and asthma, to hairdressing products. Many other products used in the workplace can be harmful such as paint, glue and beauty products.

This useful guidance tool will help small businesses comply with health and safety law and are compliant with CoSHH regulations. CoSHH is the law that requires employers to control substances that are hazardous to health. The CoSHH Regulations require employers to undertake risk assessments on their employees to determine how workers are exposed to dangerous chemicals and by how much . CoSHH helps provide measures to reduce harm to health and gives guidance on how to keep all dangerous chemicals in good working order.

The guide is practical and user friendly, and it highlights the importance of employers checking each substance they use and finding out how the substance can be harmful. Employers are encouraged to check the information which comes with products, for example; a safety data sheet. A material safety data sheet (MSDS) is a form containing data regarding the properties of a particular substance. Remember the MSDS is not an assessment.

Small businesses are an important contributor to the economy and are affected by a considerable number of occupational health related issues every year. However, if they follow the directions given in the guide, this will ensure that they are taking as much preventative measures as is needed to ensure the health and safety of their employees.

Published by HSE 21st December 2009

To view or download this document click here

If you require assistance or advice on completing your CoSHH assessments please contact Bravanark simply complete the enquiry form by clicking here

Fire safety breaches cost retailer £400,000.00

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:19:40 GMT

Record £400,000 fine for retailer's fire safety breaches

The fire closed part of Oxford Street for three days High street retailer New Look has been fined £400,000 and ordered to pay £136,052 in costs after pleading guilty to two breaches of fire safety legislation, following a serious fire at its Oxford Street store in London.

Thirty five fire engines and around 150 firefighters attended the fire on 26 April 2007, when around 450 people form the store and surrounding premises were evacuated. The first call to the fire service did not come until an office worker in an adjacent building took action, and the delay meant that the fire had already broken through the second floor windows when firefighters arrived. Despite the building's fire alarm sounding, the alarm was reset on at least one occasion, said London Fire Brigade.

Crews remained on the scene for the next three days and a section of Oxford Street was closed to traffic and the public for two days. The cause of the fire was never established and the store was subsequently demolished.

One charge to which New Look pleaded guilty was for an inadequate fire risk assessment which was found to have a number of flaws, including no record of the appropriate procedures to be taken during a fire alarm. Another breach was insufficient staff training, which led to a delayed evacuation of the premises. This lack of training, said LFB, also led to staff evacuating around 150 people through the main entrance which was directly underneath the fire on the second floor.

Other alleged breaches taken into account included the absence of an interface between the swipe card system and the fire alarm panel which would have deactivated the doors. In addition, green emergency door release units were fitted on the wrong side of the basement doors

Chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, Councillor Brian Coleman, said: “Good business management includes taking responsibility for fire safety, knowing the law and acting on it. This conviction shows that large companies are not exempt from prosecution and that London Fire Brigade will take action when businesses do not take their fire safety responsibilities seriously. Failure to comply with the law can, as this case has shown, result in a substantial fine.”

Source: Fire Safety Engineering (www.fseonline.co.uk)

Have you completed your Fire Risk assessment yet. Contact Bravanark for further information by completing our enquiry form here.

First aid at Work - Changes to training regime

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:27:35 GMT

From 1 October new changes to the first aid training regime are being introduced to give businesses and organisations greater flexibility. While legislation remains the same, there are changes to the supporting guidance.

Download First Aid at Work Regulations here

Frequently asked questions click here

SWINE FLU - ADVISE FOR EMPLOYERS

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:43:39 GMT

General advice for employers for the current situation
Employers and employees should always practice good personal hygiene measures – use a disposable tissue to control coughs/sneezes, dispose of it appropriately and wash your hands before eating, drinking etc. In addition at the current time you should:

Advise your staff to stay at home if they are sick with flu-like symptoms and have good reason to believe, based on HPA guidance, that they may have been exposed to the swine flu virus Send home any employees who are displaying flu-like signs/symptoms in the situation described above. For further information visit HSE web site www.hse.gov.uk

EUROPEAN SAFETY WEEK

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:15:33 GMT

European Safety Week October 2009 focuses on risk assessment

The European Campaign for Safety and Health at Work will focus on risk assessment for the second year of this two-year campaign. Let Bravanark help you to simplify the risk assessment process and allow you to take control of your own health and safety.

The campaign runs from October 19 - 25, and is aimed at a wide range of stakeholders including employers, workers and safety representatives, and is intended to promote the benefits of completing and implementing a risk assessment. It will show that conducting risk assessments is not necessarily complicated, bureaucratic or 'just for the experts'.

Bravanark is ideally placed to help you to provide support for your organisation and employees with its risk assessment courses and other health and safety services. Our experienced trainers and consultants can help you to build risk assessment into everything you do, easily and practically.

Our next course on Principles of Risk assessments is on 21 October 2009 in Reading.

Click here for course details.

£3m-a-year payouts

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:35:33 GMT

£3m-a-year payouts for pupils who slip and trip

ACCIDENTS and mishaps in schools are costing £16,000 a day in compensation payments to pupils. Playground falls, slipping on ice and knocks during PE, which may once have been seen as part of the rough and tumble of school life, last year cost councils almost £3 million. In Derbyshire, £35,000 was awarded to a pupil injured after a collision during a games lesson. In Barnsley, playground slides have cost the council £13,000. One pupil who suffered a head injury while on a slide received £5,500; another received £7,500 for breaking a collar bone after falling off a slide. Hertfordshire Council paid a settlement of £4,000 to a student whose injury was blamed on an inadequate warm-up session before a PE lesson. A student in Norfolk received £2,800 after breaking a hand against a piece of wood held in a vice. And cheerleading cost Middleborough Council £4,250 after a pupil fell over during practice.

The cases emerged after 131 out of 150 local education authorities responded to a survey, revealing payouts totaling £2.8 million in the 2008-09 financial year and £2 million in 2007-08.

Susie Squire, campaign manager at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'While no doubt some of these claims are legitimate, it's bonkers that many kids are getting cash just for falling over in the playground. Each claim needs to be more carefully evaluated.'

Other compensation payouts included:
• £4,250 for an injury sustained after a pupil in Warrington was made 'to wear inappropriate footwear';
• £6,000 to a pupil hurt after tripping in a playground pothole in Bexley, London;
• £800 to a pupil from Hammersmith who suffered dental injuries when a teacher threw a lollipop that rebounded off a desk and struck the pupil's face;
• £6,000 in Suffolk to a pupil who broke a toe playing basketball barefoot — and £9,000 to another Suffolk child who was hit by a calculator and broke a tooth.

Professor Frank Furedi, a sociologist at Kent University, said that the 'claims culture' could weaken standards in education. 'You end up not doing things in the best interest of the child but in such a way as to minimise legal action,' he said.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families said: 'Schools are generally safe places but accidents happen, and deciding whether compensation is due will be a matter for the courts if and when cases are brought.'
By Helen Dowd Mail on Sunday 2nd August 2009

Slips, trips and falls can be costly – as firm discovers

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:54:45 GMT

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is warning that slips and falls can be costly - after the company responsible for a driver breaking his ankle was fined a total of £5,600 and ordered to pay costs of £8,951.

This ruling against Basingstoke-based Sunlight Services Group Ltd comes just as the HSE launches the second phase of its ‘Shattered Lives’ campaign to highlight the potentially fatal consequences of slips, trips and falls in the workplace.

The company was prosecuted for failing to ensure there was a suitable and sufficient risk assessment of the wooden decking near a diesel pump in its London Road depot in Coventry and failing to protect drivers using the pump. The company was also guilty of failing to ensure every floor in the workplace was suitable for the purpose for which it was used and was not slippery.

Sunlight Services Group was fined £2,400 by Coventry Magistrates’ Court,on February 4th 2009, after pleading guilty to breaching Regulation 12 (1) of the Workplace (Health, Safety & Welfare) Regulations 1992. It also pleaded guilty to the charge of breaching Regulation 3(1) of the Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and the court imposed a fine of £3,200.

The court heard how a driver at the firm’s London Road depot was stranded after slipping as he prepared to fill his truck with diesel. After falling, he was alone for 20 minutes until managing to contact his wife by mobile phone and she called an ambulance. Surgeons needed to insert a plate and two pins to repair his broken ankle that was also dislocated.

The driver, an agency worker, had been working at the company for just two weeks when the incident took place on 20 November 2007.

The man had parked his vehicle next to the locked pump to fill up with fuel and slipped on the wooden decking in front of the diesel pump. He took just two steps before slipping and being injured. When the paramedics arrived, they too found the surface to be slippery and had to remove some of the decking before they could move the man to the ambulance.

It was not the first time drivers had slipped in the area, as the area was slippery and the pump had a minor drip leak when not in use, but no injuries had occurred before. The area has since been concreted at the suggestion of HSE and the Health and Safety Laboratory.

Speaking after the case, HSE inspector Pamela Folsom, said: “An incident like this can often be seen as trivial and laughed off by employers but the cost to businesses and victims mean it is no laughing matter.

“In this case, the dangers should easily have been identified with even a basic risk assessment and avoided by installing a different type of flooring. Wooden decking was the incorrect selection of material for an outdoor area that was subject to weather conditions and fuel spillage. Although the designated Health and Safety Officer of Sunlight had observed a trip hazard from pallets they did not examine the slippery nature of the decking due to inappropriate footwear. The risk assessments that had been undertaken bore little reality to the actual hazards highlighted and demonstrated the inadequate training given to those employees undertaking them. Consequently the company took no action to reduce the likelihood of a future incident occurring until intervention by the HSE during its own investigation.”

Fatalities and serious injuries arising from slips, trips and fall incidents cost an estimated £700 million last year. In the West Midlands region five people were killed after falling from height in 2007/08, with a further 4,200 suffering injuries from slips, trips or falls.

Notes to editors
Regulation 3(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 states: “Every employer shall make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of his employees to which they are exposed whilst they are at work; and the risks to the health and safety of persons not in his employment arising out of or in connection with the conduct by him of his undertaking, (NB: In this instance, agency drivers were ‘non-employees’ who were put at risk by Sunlight’s failure to have a safe system of work.) for the purpose of identifying the measures he needs to take to comply with the requirements and prohibitions imposed upon him by or under the relevant statutory provisions and by Part II of the Fire Precautions (Workplace Regulations 1997. Regulation 12(1) of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare Regulations1992, states: “Every floor in a workplace and the surface of every traffic route in a workplace shall be of a construction such that the floor or surface of the traffic route is suitable for the purpose for which it is used.”

Further information on slips, trips and falls can be found at: www.hse.gov.uk/shatteredlives

HSE Shattered Lives Campaign

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:52:43 GMT

HSEs Award-winning Shattered Lives campaign, launches across Britain today (9th February 2009).

This second phase will build on the momentum of last years campaign by continuing to raise awareness about the risks of slips, trips and falls from height at work, and how simple it is to take action to prevent these accidents from happening in your workplace.

Although there is something in the campaign for every workplace, we are again targeting five sectors, Food Retail and Food and Drink Manufacturing, Catering and Hospitality, Building and Plant Maintenance and Construction. But, also now extending the campaign to two others: Health and Education.

Phase 2 also moves the focus on to promoting action in the workplace. And, HSE has produced an exciting new innovative e-tool called STEP (Slips and Trips eLearning package) that will help dutyholders take the action needed to prevent around 11,000 major injuries to workers arising from slips and trips that occur every year.

It is available now and free to use on line just click on this link www.hse.gov.uk/slips/step/index.htm

Visit the Shattered Lives website now and find out more about our 2009 Campaign www.hse.gov.uk/shatteredlives/index.htm

The Health and Safety of Great Britain

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:50:49 GMT

HSE is running a three month consultation process on our new strategy and we are calling on all our partners to take part. The strategy identifies goals in the following key areas:

the need for strong leadership;
building competence;
involving the workforce;
creating healthier, safer workplaces;
customising support for SMEs;
avoiding catastrophe; and taking a wider perspective.

For further information contact www.hse.gov.uk/strategy/index.htm