Posted By Adrian Watson Dear Ernie, The simple answer is no, providing that the risk assessment meets the requirements of Regulation 4 of The manual Handling Regulations 1992 as amended. " (3) In determining for the purposes of this regulation whether manual handling operations at work involve a risk of injury and in determining the appropriate steps to reduce that risk regard shall be had in particular to - (a) the physical suitability of the employee to carry out the operations; (b) the clothing, footwear or other personal effects he is wearing; (c) his knowledge and training; (d) the results of any relevant risk assessment carried out pursuant to regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999; (e) whether the employee is within a group of employees identified by that assessment as being especially at risk; and (f) the results of any health surveillance provided pursuant to regulation 6 of the Management of Health and Safety Regulations 1999.".

Posted By Rod Douglas I concur with Andrew, dependant the Manual Handling Risks involved, are they insignificant/trivial? or is there a significant Risk that needs addressing by a Manual Handling Assessment? I would almost certainly always "Double" up on Assessments like this one.. Yours Aye, Rod D

Posted By Rod Douglas With regards to Risk Assessments, I have a folder of Risk Assessments & a register for different departments, which staff sign to say that they have read and understood their Fire Evacuation Procedures and Risk Assessments appertaining to their job roles, you cannot take a horse to water, but.... As a part of a positive H & S Culture it is strongly encouraged that ALL staff read and sign, I also do this with "Tool Box Talks". Registers are a very good "Audit" Tool

Posted By Stuart Nagle I have read that providing suitable and sufficient attention is paid to the area (any area where a seperate risk assessment is required) of risk, there is no need to repeat the risk assessment required under another set of regulations. I would expect there are exceptions to this rule, particularly when the risks are complex, but would suggest that if you are following the written advice provided by HSE, you would be doing enough (or so HSE state) to comply with the requirements. Is there any evidence or case law to suggest that where one assessment has been done that considered, sufficiently, all the risk involved in a task, that it was deemed not to be suitable and sufficent, and that another seperate risk assessment should have been completed? I would be interested in hearing from anyone who could give an example. Stuart

Posted By Adrian Watson Dear all, There are a number of points here. The first one being that risk assessments are not carried out to produce an audit paper trail but to control risks. A risk assessment is no good if it's findings are not implemented. The second is that there is no duty to record risk assessments only the significant findings; i.e the hazards, the preventative and control measures and the measures required to comply with the law. These can be recorded in the SOP's, training system etc as there is no prescribed method of recording risk assessments. Whilst I do not like it, I accept that if you do not have a piece of paper saying on it "risk assessment" then you are in trouble if you have a claim against you. This has nothing to do with safety but everything to do with the claims culture that we've ended up with. The last point I would like to make is that if you have too many pieces of paper you will make yourself liable in court because you will without doubt produce gaps that a lawyer will exploit against you. So the golden rule is keep a documented audit trail but, KEEP IT SHORT AND SIMPLE! Regards Adrian Watson.