Posted By Merv Newman You could try a walking stick. Get it from an approved medical appliance supplier and it must meet SOME standard or other. But then your inspector may say it wasn't designed for PULLING, just supporting. Shepherds crooks ARE designed for pulling. As well as for thumping randy rams (is randy rams a tautology ?) God, the daft subjects that come up on this chat show. Well, I am in Caen so must expect a load of tripe. Need a drink. Merv

Posted By Nicky Hey less of the sarcasm, my client has an improvement notice about this so I have to take it seriously. Yes, I am actually going to buy the shepherds crook, it'll probably do the job OK

Posted By Jim Walker What is a LA EHO doing in a warehouse? Isn't that HSE inspectors job? Whilst the advice "might" be good, I think you ought to appraise it and not just blindly comply. Be aware that the EHO may only think they know what they are talking about. I can see a potential for injury using this device.

Posted By R Joe Nicky, as the issue is the subject of an Improvement Notice it may be useful to firstly advise your client to request an adequate schedule to the notice so that they are clear about what is required, and so that the EHO concerned is required to justify and explain their Notice adequately. Depending on what this achieves, and the background to the Notice, (which of course we don't know), you may also want to consider taking your client through the HSE's Enforcement Policy Statement, which gives the first principle as Proportionality. This is not to say that the issue itself, preventing injury through poor handling is not important, clearly it is. It is, however, to highlight that 'sensible health and safety' is not just an issue for practitioners, it very much involves the enforcing authorities and how they operate on a day to day basis. Regards RJ

Posted By David Pike Hi Nicky Utilising a hook type tool is fairly common in warehousing especially where split pick points are in operation. Where the cases to be picked are at ground level then the pallet should be simply pulled out of the pick point by mechanical means, e.g. pump truck, electric ppt or forkilift and then reversed so that the cases that were at the rear of the pallet are now at the front. Clearly this is the most obvious position within the racking to have the heavy cases although the mechanical assistance on any level of the split pick racking would be beneficial. But in any case an opportunity to use the MAC tool to assist in the evaluation of the manual handling risk assessment. I hope this is of some help to you? Regards Dave

Posted By David Pike Hi Nicky This kind of hook type tool arrangement was in use in the Safeway distribution network some years ago when they used split pick points and they just got their engineering department to fabricate them out of aluminium or something similar and I belive they looked more like something a croupier might use. Regards Dave