Posted By Salus It has been my opinion for some time now that certain pieces of legislation are basically unworkable in the practical sense, e.g.man Hand / noise / vibration. Most employers do not have the competancy or money to understand them, like the vibration thread so many variables.Companies buy in products to get around the regs.Do they actually prevent injury,has the person on the kango even seen the risk assessment / coshh assessment / man hand. assessment / vib .assessment for his task?.I believe that some legislation is not always put in to protect employees and employers but makes it easier to "nick you". because you had an incident you could not have been following the relevant regs. Big companies have the money, time and recourses to work out complex formulae for certain regs. but it does no good to the man with the kango, who will probaly not even work for the same company for more than a few months, do his records of usage go with him like the CSCS card,why do these not have a persons blood group / are they diabetic etc.on them. Maybe we should have sites that run themselves. Would it be beneficial to ensure that the client includes in his costing for the work an independant SHE costing for all the programmed work carried out by contractors (make it law they must do this)after all they know how much they are going to pay the PC and any subbies. All would then know that the money for SHE would have been provided up front not react when problems occur.I could go on for ages and I know I will be slammed by some of you but these are just my thoughts on where safety is going, we can only keep pecking away at the disbelievers.

Posted By steven bentham Salus The problem with the UK is that it has tried for years to move away from 'prescriptive' legislation such as the 1960's construction regulations and replace them with more risk based legislation where the duty holder undertakes risk assessments and compliance measures. So far so good. The HSC then has brought far more legislation in than it has repealed. Thus the employer (big or small) is faced with a massive amount of ACOP & Guidance, many of which are well written. But rather than the HSC allowing industry to set standards it keeps on churning out legislation. You are partially correct with the complexity of some aspects, such as noise and vibration. But if they are complex to understand for employers think what it is like for an Inspector to try enforce in the Courts. You have only to look at the breakdown of the HSE in terms of Inspectors who are actively out in workplaces and those who are in 'Policy'. You can ask the question 'Are those in charge of the HSC & HSE there to please you at the business end or their political masters and Europe'?