Posted By Graham Gowland I am sure some of the questions will relate to your experience working in a Unionised environment.

Posted By sylvia Good advice above; you may well find that all questions will relate (in some way) to the Person Specification and little else, as some councils have very restrictive recruitment processes, and little flexibility in question selection. Another tip - research this council (if you don't know much about LAs especially) and find out what services they offer. Different types of council do different things, for instance, education or social care is County or Met boroughs (usually) refuse collection is district or met boroughs. See if - from the info - you can figure out if they manage housing stock, or if it is done by a managing company, or if the more active services like refuse, parks maintenance or leisure are "in-house" or contracted out. Does the JD indicate a departmental job, or council-wide - does it include schools (not all do see above). Then try to imagine what kind of safety problems these services face. You can make assumptions if you state these clearly as "for example if . . . " or "I imagine you might . . ". They won't expect you to know too much about how they or LAs work but will hope you have done a bit of homework on them. How many staff for example. Try to prepare a few examples in your mind to cater for questions around a particular topic. EG. Noise will be an issue for recycling staff, gardeners, parks, etc, but very few councils have machine shops with a continuous noisy climate. Manual handling: library staff or childcare workers (not so obvious as refuse or recycling). Schools - may have asbestos materials and with their use of contractors this creates a big potential. Don't forget fire - lots of council buildings - and DSE and stress (social workers, teachers, office staff). Most councils face a huge range of safety problems to some degree at some point - it is one of the most diverse places to work in H&S, although the degree of risk is low to moderate. Big risk areas - moving vehicles eg. refuse work, deliveries, or school crossing patrols, and the extensive and "disguised" use of contractors - prepare to be surprised. Some councils have specialist fire, asbestos and training teams, so the H&S role may vary in extent. Good luck.

Posted By GST Many thanks for the responses they are very helpful, I will take all the advice on board! Regards GST.