Posted By Robert K Lewis Neil's commments were for me well put. The speech by Gordon Brown including the Operations and Financial Reporting(OFR) typifies the innate superiority complex held by the financial lobby that only money in reality matters at the end of the day. Many of us in this profession have struggled to get organisations to recognise that the Internal Auditing and certification requirements concerning risks to investment in the Turnbull code actually should include ALL risks to their investment. Yes I know Turnbull is only mandatory for plcs but it must be good practice for all other organisations. Perhaps it also shows that, as with the pensions debate, government departments do not have the same hymn sheet and we will have to await many other tragedies before it can be recognised and accepted that organisations must review and publicise their safety performance in some recognised and uniform manner. I would hate however to see the bland affirmations and certifications that are made on financial statements. This is perhaps an area where we can make a difference with genuine and searching review and reporting of business risks related to health and safety. Neil, when you do have the opportunity to read this I for one would be pleased to see IOSH promote a working party on this matter to produce a code of practice within HSE control. Bob

Posted By Jonathan Sandler Turbull is only guidane, what about the Cadbury report that preceeded the Turnbull report or 93. Did Turnbull base his guidance on HSG 65? The only reason why a person has to work is for money. You have to be competent to be a bricky not not to be a director!

Posted By Jonathan Sandler Agreed, re Turnbull not safety, but Turnbull took the basis of HSG 65 and made Corp Gov out of it. Accountability, proof, audit trail, etc.

Posted By Jonathan Sandler Where is IOSH's Corp Governace Procedure to be found please.

Posted By Jonathan Sandler Thanks for that. FYI IOSH do NOT have a COrp Gov policy!!!

Posted By Robert K Lewis Out of interest these are some quotes from the Times concerning the speech The main thrust of the speech saw the Chancellor promising to abandon plans to force companies to report on their social and environmental strategies in operating and financial reviews…………… The Chancellor said these moves were part of a new risk-based approach to regulation that would be based on "trust in the responsible company". He said there should be "no inspection without justification, no form filling without justification and no information requirements without justification". He said: "In the new legislation we will publish before Christmas we will make this risk-based approach a statutory duty of the regulators." The last one is an interesting take but I am unsure what he means, but am I any different to anyone else on this? The emphasis seems to be away from specific requirements but I wonder if the DWP are with him. Bob

Posted By Jonathan Sandler Ian, Thank you for your reply but how was this board elected, is there any conflict of interest with this board? how is the boards accountablity demonstrated. I accept IOSH is NOT a plc but could we not have a Corp Gov policy with the amount of funds we (IOSH) have? Regards

Posted By Richard Jones Bob, I’m not sure what sort of code of practice you are advocating here…it may well be that there is something already out there. For information, the subject of OFR was an unusual and interesting one for us to get involved in as part of our consultation process…not our normal sphere of activity. The original consultation was to do with OFR and Materiality…the latter bit catching our attention. It was about the board identifying what was ‘material’ to the long-term viability of the company, so we responded arguing that people have to be ‘material’ to any business, therefore their health and safety must also be ‘material’. It worked…and the second consultation document had three mentions of health and safety (see http://www.iosh.co.uk/fi...riality%20pdf%2015%2Epdf). We responded to the second consultation in a similar vein and this response can be viewed at: http://www.iosh.co.uk/fi...se/pdf%2050%20OFR2%2Epdf The result of all this consultation was the passing of new legislation: The Companies Act 1985 (Operating and Financial Review and Directors’ Report) Regulations 2004, which came fully into force in April of this year. We were disappointed that ‘health and safety’ wasn’t specifically mentioned in the statutory instrument, but were greatly heartened when the Accounting Standards Board issued their guidelines on ‘how to do’ OFR and it was there (4 times), see: http://www.frc.org.uk/im...ded/documents/ACF345.pdf I think this may well cover the 'code of practice' you referred to! So from April this year, it was mandatory for all GB listed companies to complete an OFR, the Chancellor seems to have reversed this in his speech to the CBI…it will be interesting to see how that can be done, particularly in the face of the apparent backlash that has occurred. Richard

Posted By Jonathan Breeze Bob, An interesting proposal, which, for what it's worth, I would like to second. It may be, as Richard suggests, that the information is out there, but if it is, it needs to be brought to the attention of H&S practitioners like myself. If it's not, then we will have made a novel and useful contribution to to the debate.