Posted By Peter Byrne I work for a local authority and I am in the process of reviewing our risk assessments and procedures following a non-fatal knife attack on one of our parking attendants. In the past we have had the usual threats, abuse and, on occasion, physical attacks that sadly seem to go with this job but this is the first incident of this nature. A quick trawl reveals similar incidents have occurred elsewhere in the country and a small number in the last twelve months in roughly comparable local authorities. As a result the issuing of ‘stab’ vests to staff has inevitably been raised although they do not seem to be widely used amongst other parking authorities at present. I would appreciate any relevant information or experience around their use and particularly any possible problems and pitfalls associated with them that might be of use to me. Incidentally the wearing of a vest on this particular occasion would not have prevented the injuries inflicted as they were to the parking attendants hands as he defended himself before the before the attacker eventually fled.

Posted By D Whitelegg I'd go along with Descarte's suggestion of beefing up your conflict resolution training rather than go down the route of providing stab vests. Good ones are not cheap and to be effective they need to be personal issue, so you have to buy one for everyone that may need it. Also, the chances are that there will be no more incidents like this for some time and people will stop wearing them, especially once summer returns as they are heavy, restrict movement and don't breath, so you sweat heaps when it's warm. You may want to consider issuing kevlar lined gloves so if they do get attacked and defend themselves they have protection for their hands. They also don't have to wear them all the time as they are easily carried. Hope this helps David

Posted By anon1234 'Excuse me Mr Mugger, could you not attcak me with that knife until I've put my gloves on to protect my hands?'

Posted By D Whitelegg As I've served as a Volunteer Police Officer for over 22 years and dealt with H&S issues in high confrontational situations for several years I object to you comments annon1234. The fact is that many situations can be predicted and these type of gloves can prove useful. I'd also agree with with Bob that conflict resolution training is not always sufficient but then as I explained in my original post many people find body armour uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time and if it is not being worn all the time it is effectively useless. Training can teach people when to retreat from a situation and leave the area. Even Police Officers will now, on occasion not tackle certain situations on their own without the right support. This is not because they lack courage or any such nonsense but because it is understood that sometime it is better to wait for support to arrive. There are now a large number of people employed as Street Wardens, PCSOs etc that have no power of arrest and so are limited in the actions they can take. Being trained to understand and recognise those situations is essential. Body armour can also give rise to a false sense of being invincible and as the original comment said, in his example it wouldn't have helped (but gloves may have done). There are always a number of ways to tackle these type of problems but sarcastic comments rarely help.

Posted By anon1234 Also I object to the implied suggestion that I haven't been in or am not aware of these type of situations - once again the point is avoid the conflict if you can - if you can't avopid the conflict then the chances are, being realistic, that you do not have time to don your PPE

Posted By anon1234 'I don't think leaving the situation is always appropriate - keeping a safe distance and awaiting help can be' - surely this is leaving the situation, either you are in a safe position or you are not - if you are you don't need PPE, if you are not you should retreat to a safe place. 'If our society is to regain a peaceful state, we must make effort to tackle wrong-doers.' - as a society I agree with this, but surely you are not advocating that this includes putting 'normal' as opposed to 'specially trained' employees into positions where they are going to be stabbed. 'Stab vests should not need to be PPE for civilians, but maybe professional back-up should be. That should include risk perception training as well as resolution training.' Agree totally

Posted By Julie I work for a passenger transport company and can tell you that we had a similar incident where a member of the public attacked an employee with a knife. After a long debate a risk assessment was done of the job as a whole and an additional control measure was to supply stab vests. These were then supplied and as mentioned earlier in the warm weather they can be unbearable. After another long debate the risk assessment was looked at again. It has now been decided that stab vests are provided for those people that want to wear them and I think only 2 people wear them regularly (out of about 14), under their uniform. Hope this helps.

Posted By Pete48 Peter, just a sideways thought at the end of the day. This is clearly one of those difficult low prob/high consequence assessments. These are the ones that are the easiest to get completely wrong. We often either dismiss them as of no consequence or go for OTT measures. So I can see why you are looking for help. You may need to consider some more detailed and quantified assessment of the risk before deciding what to do. I have never had to wear a stab vest but have worked in industrial scale glass processing where the risk of a 6mx3m sheet of glass breaking is an example of low prob/high consequence and the risk of being cut is ever present due to the "hands-on" (!) nature of much of the work. I am not going to tell you what the ppe standards were, I wonder what those with no knowledge of the industry would expect. I can tell you we did not wear fully encasing body armour!

Posted By rjhills In a previous job we had to consider violence to employees, and issued each with attack alarms, linked to a rapid response team. We found that this considerably reduced incidents as the response team, (which admittedly only had to cover a small area), succeeded after after a short time, in putting out a message thatour employees not just fair game. We had close links to the police, and at no time did we need toconsider stab vests. Maybe we were lucky, but this approach worked.