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Posted By Joe Ridley
British standard publications are so expensive? Some are around £100 if non-member, even if you are a member it's still around £50. It's a bit much when your company pays out for a couple of PAS publications (65 and 39) to find it is 20 pages of paper not even bound!
Cheers
Joe
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Posted By DRB
Joe
Fair point you have there. They seem have become more epensive over the years. I brought a copy of BS5304:1988 some years ago and whilst it was still around £50-£60 at least it was a hundred pages or more and hardback. Now you get something that is 20 pages, printed of in their sales office and without even a folder and they charge you a fortune for it.
This opens a whole new debate about whether you should have to pay for this type of info. Perhaps where a commercial undertaking is looking for standards by which they can develop their product there is an arguement to say that they should have to pay but what about pure H&S publications such as OHSAS 18001 and HSE publications? Surely these should all be freely available??
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Posted By Ken Taylor
They've always been a terrible price and it seems to be a bit of a monopoly situation. I believe they also charge certain data-bases a high sum to include the text of BSs. One used to be able to refer to them in the local reference library but few seem to stock them these days. I suspect that BS will say that the cost of production and keeping up-to-date makes the price realistic.
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Posted By Sally
The cost of british standards reflects the amount of work that goes into deciding on what the standards are.
Most of them require extensive testing, long term research etc.
It's not just a case of someone writing a document and printing it. You are not paying for the document, rather the expertise that went into producing it.
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Posted By Ian P
Am I being too cynical thinking of stealth tax?
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Posted By Steve Cartwright
I was under the impression that British Standards are not law. You can't be prosecuted for a breach of a standard, but you can be prosecuted for a breach of a regulation or act of parliment.
What information are you after?
Regulations such as PUWER, LOLER, MANAGMENT REGS, COSHH, etc all come with approved codes of practise. You can buy them from the HSE and other good book shops from between £10 - £15.
Also if you go to your local library they normally have copies of the over priced standards. They will normally let copy 3 to 4 pages for about 50p.
The amount of companies that wave the british standards at me to try and sell their products really gets my goat.
The other thing you have to watch with them is that British Standards are not retrospective. I've had companies come to me and claim a curtain piece of equipment does not comply with a british standard. Then it turns out that the standard has changed, so they try and sell you a new piece of kit. If it complied with the old standard then the kit is still ok.
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Posted By Robert K Lewis
With the ISO standards the policy is to allow the local representative organisation to provide documents in the most suitable of the standard comercial languages for their situation at a suitable price which they are free to determine. Thus Singapore sells ISO standards in English at a significantly lower price than BSI in the UK. Pricing is therefore based on what the local market can achieve.
The purely BS documents do not unfortunately fall under this regime.
Bob
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Posted By Joe Ridley
Thanks for getting back to me, in response to some of the comments above -
1.I have tried local libraries, no joy
2.Working in the leisure environment several guidance documents reference BS standards
3.I appreciate a lot of work may go into them and research, but does that not already go into various books and other publications in the health and safety field which may be around the same price
4. Standards may not be law but are they not recognised as good practice to follow? Which then means your are keeping up to date with latest developments, something we are required to do anyway
5. When I received the two documents PAS:65 and PAS:39 - Note they are not even British Standards - I was somewhat dissapointed to find they covered information already available in HSG 179 - Managing Health and Safety in Swimming Pools
The other point is following recent visits from our fire safety contractor responsible for maintaing our fire systems they have told us in a couple of centres that their current systems are illegal as they do not comply with BSi Standards. Then again in some health and safety publications it says 'make sure they comply with BS' or something like 'should comply with BS'.It just seems whatever angle you take on this you cant seem to get away from the standards.
All I am saying if BSi standards are hand in glove with health and safety and other areas of management, then they should be at an affordable price especially if you cant get through library or elsewhere.
Ok rant over (was that a rant?) thanks to all for taking the time to respond
Cheers
Joe
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Posted By Steve Cartwright
I would be vary wary of what your Fire Safety Contractor has said about your fire safety equipment.
If you do some digging you will probably find that the standards have changed since the equipment was fitted. Providing the equipment complied with the standards that were in place at the time of installation you do not need to do anything, providing it still works.
They are probably just trying to get you to buy a new system from them.
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Posted By Jim Walker
As someone who has been involved in writing British Standards, believe me, there is hell of a lot of work goes into them.
BSI has to stand on its own feet - not much taxpayers money goes their way. Its hardly comparable with HSE in that respect.
Obviously you people have never bought a limited readership technical book recently.
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Posted By Andrew Brown
Steve Cartwright wrote:
'I was under the impression that British Standards are not law. You can't be prosecuted for a breach of a standard, but you can be prosecuted for a breach of a regulation or act of parliment.'
Technically true, however if we consider machinery guarding, if you purchase a piece of machinery and it complies (and i mean actually complies when scrutinised not just has a self certifying CE mark)with BS EN whatever then it would comply with PUWER Reg 11 Dangerous Parts.
'C' type standards provide the benchmark for what is considered reasonably practicable guarding for that type of machine.
HSE spend a lot of time on european technical standards committees arguing for the highest possible standard of protection as they know once the standard is accpeted by europe anything complying is deemed adequately protected.
If you buy a piece of machinery which is CE marked but actually doesn't meet the relevant standard you the employer would be in breach of puwer and potentially subject to enforcement, the supplier (if in the UK) can be pursued under section 6 or supply of machinery regs.
As i remember HSE is a major contributor of expertise in writing and producing standards but isn't paid by BSI for its time and i think still has to pay its BSI subscription like anyone else
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Posted By Steve Cartwright
Andrew
The point I was trying to make is that you do not need to buy the very expensive British Standards Publications and as the original poster was complaining about the cost I thought I would offer some alternatives.
You mentioned PUWER. You can actually buy a copy of PUWER along with codes of practice for about £12. The codes of practice give you guidance on how to comply with the regulations. I would imagine that the HSE had some input into this document too. Follow the guidance and you comply with the regs. Its as simple as that.
How much would the British Standards cost?
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Posted By Ken Taylor
I've tended to need the BSs more in the realms of fire safety and elements of building construction not clearly covered by the Approved Documents (eg certain industrial type stairs, ladders, walkways, etc).
I do think it time for them to be available on the Internet (like new legislation and the ADs now are) - and for BSI to be supported financially by Government.
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Posted By Raymond Rapp
I totally agree, BS standards are in my opinion grossly over priced. I accept that a certain amount of work and research goes into them...but hey, this is making a profit on the h&s bandwagon.
Fortunately I do not need to use or reference them very often. Most of the standards I use are contained in HSE publications, which should be free, as one observer has pointed out, that is, if safety was really treated seriously by the powers that be.
Regards
Ray
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Posted By Sally
BS standards are not necessarily safety related except in the broadest terms therefore I think it is unfair to suggest they are jumping on the H&S bandwagon.
I also don't thing they can be compared to an ACOP - the difference in thethe level of detail is imense.
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Posted By Andrew Joule Land
BSI publications are a profit centre. so they have to make money. Joining (at a cost) improves their client base and so they can offer cut price incentives.
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Posted By Graham Bullough
Though I'm deviating from the original question, it is probably still pertinent to comment that HSE Books charge for most of their publications, while DfES Publications (Dept for Education & Skills), also based at Sudbury in Suffolk (perhaps at the same or a neighbouring address) do not charge for theirs!
Some responders have already pointed out that BSI is a commercial organisation and has to cover its costs, notably those involved in research and test activities. However, HSE is a government department/quango and gets nearly all of its costs paid, like the DfES, by the government which derives its money mostly by taxing companies and ourselves as individuals. Therefore, why do people in the education sector get free publications while people in all sectors get charged for the priced HSE publications?
Another related aspect: BSI has always charged hefty prices for copies of BS 5304:1975 "Safeguarding of machinery" and its successors, yet my understanding was that HM Factory Inspectorate (which became the major constituent of HSE in 1975) effectively wrote most if not all of its contents. One wonders if BSI paid HMFI anything or a sufficient amount for all the work, information and experience on which BS 5304 and its successors are based!
Graham
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