Health and safety inspectors to charge 256 an hour
Discussion
don4l said:
mph1977 said:
3. Method Statements , PUWER, COSHH are necessary evils, alternatively take your business to bongo-bongo land where there is no legislation but don't come crying when no one will buy your product because of the lack of compliance and QA information.
"Bongo-bongo land"...Where is this? I feel a Jo Brand moment coming on here. In fact, I suspect that you might be a bit of a racist.
Don
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cazzer said:
mph1977 said:
3. Method Statements , PUWER, COSHH are necessary evils
How we got by before people could sucessfully run businesses god knows.Thank god for the introduction of all that s
te so we could actually start to make things and trade.It was hell for centuries just banging rocks together.
PUWER just formalises the sensible action of any responsible employer in protecting his/ her investment both in people and the kit
COSHH etc is self evident or do you wish to return to the days of Mad Hatters and 'Phossy Jaw' ?
Blackpuddin said:
Mojooo said:
Blackpuddin said:
A complete and utter outrage. Puts me in mind of Keith Lard from Phoenix Nights.
I believe we should have an absolute right to opt out of H&S if we choose, whether we're employers, employees, or just citizens using a resource.
As a business owners would you totally opt out of H and S? What parts bother you partcularly?I believe we should have an absolute right to opt out of H&S if we choose, whether we're employers, employees, or just citizens using a resource.
t hinders your day to day working just because some tt bag has to qualify his/her existance.I don't for a moment think H&S is useless. Some of the places I have worked definitely need it (Teesside Beam Mill being one). But I have found that at places were it is needed, like on a heavy industrial site, the measures are usually very reasonable, well thought out and appropriate. However its in the office environment where it just goes so OTT that all you can do is laugh at its sillyness.
I mean in the beam mill I was allowed to stand mere feet away from a mobile 20 ton slab of steel coming out the furnace at 1200 degress centigrade. Similar heavy stuff is moving about overhead on cranes (of course you never stand under a crane!). Yet in my office a 2 minute experiment took 1 hour because a laptop power supply wasn't PAT tested and the lab techie wouldn't let me do anything.
Yes I am one of these people that just doesn't understand the necessity of PAT testing on items like laptops/computers/cameras. If you can go buy a reputable brand, with all its international quality standards from a shop, take it home and plug it in and use it for years without issue then I dont see why it needs to be PAT tested the moment the plug socket isn't in your house. If its potentially that dangerous, why don't we have annual PAT testing in our homes? PAT testing does have a use for mains equipment which you yourself have designed and built of course.
Bosshogg76 said:
Taking into account that my company considers 20 deaths a year to be an acceptable lose, HSE can charge what to feck they want to keep me safe.
Edited by Bosshogg76 on Tuesday 20th March 01:20
Unfortunately we cannot rely on common sense, as what is common to most of us....isnt common to all. I have seen some nasty incidents that should have been easily prevented. WRT to PAT testing, this demonstrates that there is a lack of knowledge of the regs and the shyster fraudsters jumping on that lack of knowledge. PAT testing for office equipment can be as simple as a visual inpsection for damage/ scorch marks etc - a record of the inspection must be made, can be in your own diary. For more complex 240v mobile equipment obviously this needs to be more thorough.
The paperwork has gone OTT and is not accessible, therefore people dont use it. I have just spent the morning writing up a HAZOP study for a water pumping system on a closed site....
Camerons red tape challenge on H&S is going nowhere, the newspaper headlines are very different from the actual findings of the Loftsted review - very little will change.
On topic I would happliy pay an expert £250 per hour for several hours of expert advice rather than triple that for some shyster lawyer defending a case!
The paperwork has gone OTT and is not accessible, therefore people dont use it. I have just spent the morning writing up a HAZOP study for a water pumping system on a closed site....
Camerons red tape challenge on H&S is going nowhere, the newspaper headlines are very different from the actual findings of the Loftsted review - very little will change.
On topic I would happliy pay an expert £250 per hour for several hours of expert advice rather than triple that for some shyster lawyer defending a case!
Bosshogg76 said:
WojaWabbit said:
Which company is this? I'd like to know in case I end up with them one day!
Given where you live and the fact you are in engineering, you would probably be able to work it out for yourself. To be honest it doesn't affect anyone's ability to work, but there's very very rarely a h&s incident, so it does its job.
Fish said:
You also DO NOT have to do PAT testing, it is not a legal requirement. I do not do it in our office. It did cause some concern on the local council H&S inspector till I explained why not and our risk assessment. They had to go away and check the legalities but ultimately were happy.
Correct!http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/july.htm
Blackpuddin said:
What others me is H&S's contribution to the erosion of common sense and the dumbing-down of society generally. If people don't understand how to survive in eminently survivable environments, then the law of natural selection should kick in, not the laws of 'compo' and nannying.
Unfortunately there are many people in the workplace that do not have any common sense and many of these are managers. I was doing a course (I forget what it was for but it was just a half day thing - my employer was paying me to sit in a warm meeting room with tea, biscuits and sandwiches, watching Powerpoint presentations). One of the blokes muttered something about H&S overriding common sense and one of the supervisors agreed.I was a volunteer member of the safety committee the bloke that was whinging was the subject of more accident reports than anyone. I saw him once up a timber stepladder that was held together with bits of cable and had a split running half the length of the stiles. He was on the top tread and on the 4th floor next to a staircase with a nice big opening in the middle.
The supervisor that was agreeing with him once suggested getting all the staff baseball caps to protect our eyes when using power tools!
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