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October's Health and Safety Update

Health and Safety update

This month we take a look at the employers duty to release information to all workers to enable them to participate fully and effectively in any consultation about their health and safety, ongoing consultations from the HSE, and recent prosecutions.

• Releasing information to employees
• Ongoing consultations
• Prosecutions

Releasing information to employees

Employers have a responsibility to provide information to all workers that will enable them to participate fully and effectively in any consultation about their health and safety. Information can be provided in whatever form is most suitable, as long as it can be understood by everyone.

The information should include:

• Procedures to be followed in the event of an emergency, including the contact details of the people nominated by the employer to help with the implementation of those procedures.
• Information about the risks the employees (and others) may face, and the measures which have been put in place to ensure that the workforce is protected including any risks notified by another employer with whom a workplace is shared.
• Safety data sheets providing information from designers, manufacturers or suppliers of any article or substance which is being used or is proposed to be used.

Safety representatives are also entitled to see copies of any document that employers must keep under health and safety law, for example the important findings of risk assessments or information relating to occurrences of any accident, dangerous occurrence or notifiable industrial disease.

Safety representatives must be given information necessary for them to fulfil their functions, such as:

• Information on any proposed changes to current working practices which may affect the health and safety at work of their employees.
• Technical information about hazards to health and safety and the necessary precautions to stop or minimise them.
• Information on equipment, materials or substances which an employer issues to homeworkers.
• The results of any action taken by the employer in the course of checking the effectiveness of their health and safety arrangements.

Ongoing consultations

ONR’s interpretation of ‘bulk quantities’ of radioactive matter

This consultation outlines ONR’s proposed approach to the definition of ‘bulk quantities’ of radioactive matter. The nuclear site licensing regime currently applies to a set of defined activities, which include the storage of bulk quantities of radioactive matter. Consultation will end on 12 December 2011.

CD237 – Proposals on Revised Control of Asbestos Regulations

This consultation sets out HSE’s proposals to introduce revised Control of Asbestos Regulations to implement the changes required to comply with the European Commission’s reasoned opinion on the UK Government’s transposition of Directive 83/477/EEC as amended by 2003/18/EC on the protection of workers from the risks of exposure to asbestos at work. Consultation will end on 04 November 2011.

CD235 – HSE proposal for extending cost recovery

This consultation sets out the HSE proposal to revise the Fees Regulations to reinstate existing fees and to extend the range of activities for which HSE recovers costs. Consultation will end on 14 October 2011.

Prosecutions

Teenager fell from moving fairground ride

A fairground attendant failed to carry out safety checks on a ride, despite warnings that a restraint bar had opened while the ride was in operation on previous occasions. Less than a minute after the ride started, the bar which should have been locked in place before the ride started, partially opened, and the teenager slid through the gap and fell approximately four metres to the ground.

The attendant appeared in court on 13 September and pleaded guilty to breaching s7(a) of the HSWA 1974. He was given a three-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £750 compensation to the injured girl.

School Prosecuted over Caretaker Incident

A school has been prosecuted after one of its staff fell from height while at work. The Caretaker was re-cladding the outside of the kitchen at the school. The man was working with a colleague on an unguarded work platform when he lost his footing and fell 1.9 metres to the ground.

The HSE prosecuting told the Court that the school failed to take suitable and sufficient measures to prevent an employee failing from height while carrying out work. The school pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act (1974) and was fined £6,500 and ordered to pay costs of £2,243.85