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November's Health and Safety Update

Health and Safety update

Welcome to this month’s Health and Safety update:

• RIDDOR Changes
• New Fire Rules for Care Homes
• Health and Safety Law Applicable to Catering

RIDDOR Changes

Employers will no longer have to report injuries of longer than three days to the authorities from next year, following the HSE’s decision to recommend an extension to the reporting threshold to ministers.

The absence period that triggers an accident report to the HSE or local authority under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) will rise from three to seven days. The HSE board agreed to recommend the change at its recent meeting, accepting the results of a public consultation which found a two-thirds majority in favour of putting back the absence threshold. The extension was first recommended by Lord Young is his report Common Sense, Common Safety, published last October, and the HSE board agreed to the public consultation in December.

The recommendation also includes extending the period in which dutyholders must notify the authorities of a RIDDOR-reportable accident from 10 to 15 days after the accident.

The HSE will now recommend the change to ministers and amendments to RIDDOR will be laid before parliament next February, so the new arrangements can come into force from April.

New Fire Rules for Care Homes

Following advice from the Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser, the Secretary of State has determined, under article 36 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 that, in this case, the use of self-closing devices on bedroom fire doors provides the most appropriate solution to remedy the failure to comply with article 14 (2) (b) of the Order.

This determination follows the fatal accident inquiry report into the fire at a care home in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, in which 14 residents died.

It is based entirely on the circumstances of the care home in question and the decisions have been taken after careful consideration of the particular circumstances relating to this case.

Health and Safety Law Applicable to Catering

What are the main health and safety issues relating to catering operations?

Individual workplaces will display their own patterns of risk, but the main causes of accidents and ill health in the catering industry are:

• Slips, trips and falls
• Lifting, manual handling and upper limb disorders
• Contact with hot surfaces and harmful substances
• Dermatitis
• Cuts from knives

What is the main health and safety law applicable to catering?

As an employing caterer, you must:

• prepare a statement of safety policy and your organisation and arrangements for achieving the policy (written if you employ more than four people)
• consult employees through safety representatives if your workplace is unionised, or employee representatives or directly if it is not unionised
• appoint someone competent to assist you with health and safety
• assess which workplace risks are significant
• make effective arrangements to control these
• carry out health surveillance where appropriate (in catering, for dermatitis or musculoskeletal risks if present)
• set up emergency procedures including those for temporary workers (in catering these are only likely to be for fire and gas leaks)
• inform and train employees on the risks present and the arrangements in place to control them
• co-ordinate procedures and work safely with others (for catering these are likely to be landlords, maintenance staff and catering engineers).

Ceridian provides a range of Health & Safety advice as part of its Small Business HR Service. For more information call us on 0800 0482 737.