RIDDOR Reporting Changes
HSE (Health & Safety Executive) have announced that, from 12 September 2011, they will expect most RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations) reports to be made online. Provision for e-mail, post and fax reports will cease and the existing phone contact will be limited to major injury and death reports; although not specified it is inferred that advice on reporting will not be forthcoming.
If you do not have online access the HSE website very helpfully suggests you try the Public Library (albeit if you do not have access you cannot see that advice!). If you still want advice, HSE suggests you employ a consultant that is on the Occupational Safety & Health Consultants Register (well, you cannot expect me to disagree with that excellent bit of advice).
Goodbye HSE Infoline
The HSE have decided to close their phone advice line from 30 September 2011; this seems to be in accordance with government desires to move all communications onto the internet while saving money. The financial reasons for closing the service appear obvious; it is calculated that every item of phone advice costs £3 whereas the cost of each visitor to the HSE website is 7 pence. However, that does not factor in that many people (myself included) only use the infoline if they have failed to find an answer on the website.
The HSE website is vast store of information that is marvellous if you know what information you need and can negotiate your way through the maze. It sometimes has a tendency to identify a problem and suggest different solutions but, obviously, you cannot discuss the alternatives and get advice on the best solution for your particular problem.
One of the benefits of the Infoline was that their operators had ready access to HSE Inspectors and could often get very specific advice. Someone must think that we shall try to get round this by phoning our local HSE direct; all phone numbers have been removed from the HSE website leaving just the addresses and fax numbers!
And finally, the new H&S Poster that came out in 1999 and must be displayed by 2014 contains the Infoline phone number. A new poster is to be prepared but, thankfully, HSE say the old posters will continue to be acceptable even if they give misleading information.
Rare Meat Burgers
It seems that some trendy food operations are supplying rare beef burgers and even rare pork burgers. Hopefully, they will have carried out an intensive Hazard Analysis as rare meat considerably increases the risk of food poisoning (especially E. coli and Campylobacter as well as the parasitic infections from pork. OK, it is extremely rare in this Country but just the thought of a Trichinella worm boring into the intestine wall to produce 1500 larvae which travel in the bloodstream before becoming cysts in the muscles – where they can cause fever, pain and potentially death – puts me off under-cooked pork. Slightly more common is Taenia solium, a human tapeworm usually 2 to 3 metres long (although the record is 50 metres).
I have no problems eating a rare steak and could, perhaps, be persuaded to risk a rare beef burger (as long as it had just been made from a good piece of beef) but I would not consider eating any rare pork product.
What a Surprise!
It seems that most premises scoring 4 or 5 stars are happy to display their food safety ratings (Scores on Doors set by local councils) but hardly anyone displays lower scores. Wales is likely to be the first Country to make it compulsory to display the scores on the premises.
Recent Cases
A restaurant and catering business has been fined £10,200 plus £1,624 costs for offences including lack of a Food Safety Management System, dirty premises, inadequate hand washing facilities and storing out of date and mouldy food. The premises has now improved and managed to go from 0 to 5 stars under the Scores on Doors scheme.
£395 fine and £456 costs for the take-away operation selling under-cooked chicken. Staff had not been trained in how to cook chicken.
Environmental Health News, July 2011
A Foreman that failed to ensure his team used the supplied trench supports was prosecuted when the trench collapsed and a worker was killed. He pleaded guilty and was fined £450.
A factory was fined £60,000 plus £20,625 costs for an incident where an untrained worker was crushed to death in a baling machine he had been instructed to clean. The company had a perfectly sound, written Safe System of Work involving the isolation and locking off of the baler before it was entered. Unfortunately, this practice had fallen into disuse and workers relied upon sensors to prevent the machine operating while they were in the danger area.
A trainee electrician was severely injured when a forklift truck used to raise him up to change lightbulbs in a warehouse over-turned. The driver was a colleague who was not trained or qualified as an FLT driver (if he had been trained he might have known the safety cage was unsafe, it was not securely attached to the forks and he should not have been moving around with the mast raised and his colleague at high level). The electrical contractor was fined £7,000 and £5,000 costs while the warehouse company (who had happily allowed untrained personnel to use their equipment) were fined £20,000 and £11,300 costs.
A worker slipped and fell into a hopper where he was impaled on the spikes designed to open the bags he was discharging into the hopper. He was alone in that part of the factory and, amazingly, managed to pull himself off the spikes, climb out of the hopper and go for help while suffering from deep penetration injuries, a broken pelvis, fractured spine and internal bleeding (he is still unable to work 12 months later). His employer, who was fined £8,000 with £5,236 costs has now supplied a mechanical means of loading the hopper.
Eight month prison sentence and £5,860 costs for the external fire risk assessor whose assessment failed to identify a number of significant deficiencies in two hotels. The hotels owner was also sent to prison for the same period with £15,000 costs for his failure to ensure there was adequate fire protection or that existing precautions were properly maintained and tested.
A 3 metre fall off a ladder leaning against the cab of a lorry resulted in 4 months off work for a worker who fractured his hip and elbow. His employer was fined £9,900 with £4,613 costs. Some months earlier an audit by a safety consultant had identified unsafe working at height practices and recommended the use of a mobile gantry; the company had then purchased an unsuitable gantry that no-one used!
Failure to supply adequate washing facilities (i.e. hot, running water) has resulted in a supplies company being fined £3,500 with £588 costs.
Safety & Health Practitioner, July 2011
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