Posted By Pam Phillips If your company sets a rule that you have to have permits/RA's etc for gaining 6 inches in height then that's what the trademen have to do. Its not for them to decide that it takes too long so we wont do it, they have to do what the employer tells them. Now on a practical basis a generic RA for low risk WAH is entirely acceptable. This can then be amended if there are other hazards presented not obvious at the generic RA stage. Remember its not the regulations that are at fault its the people who interpret them. Hope that helps.

Posted By John A Wright MickN, Hope you come back to respond to rhe replies to your message, it's very frustrating for posters here to not know if their advice is useful or not. I have to agree with others above. If it takes 40 minutes to organise a step ladder then it's the procedures that are at fault. The maintenance manager should have a ladder register which identifies which ladders can do which jobs and he or a supervisor can decide if a separate risk assessment is necessary for a job. To reach/do a small job (e.g. stick a sign on a wall or whatever your tradesman was doing) should already have a ladder assigned and issuing the ladder should take 2 minutes, not 40. John W

Posted By MikeP MickN You said "This tradesman was no longer allowed to use a stepladder to elevate himself six inches in the course of a days work".....WHY If he needs to work off the ground surely it is safer to let him use a ladder. As the others stated it is the company procedurews that need reviewing not the regs MikeP

Posted By Philip McAleenan Mick, At last years joint anniversary conference between the IOSH Ireland and NI branches Ciaran McAleenan presented a paper on the very issue of competence which examined how the competent worker is often neutered by the existence of superfluous functions and roles in the workplace. This can be extended to include those who devise and apply rules and regulations in such a manner that competence cannot be effectively exercised as the worker is held responsible for what he does but his authority to make competent decisions is negated by the existence of someone else who makes those decision for him. The paper is available to download from this link, http://www.web-safety.co..._Matrix_of_Authority.pdf The paper describes a number of examples of innovate practice from around the world and invites safety professionals to consider these as models for transforming the culture in workplaces that leads to the type of situation that you have described. A follow up paper has been written for the World Congress of Safety at the beginning if July and it will be generally available after it has been presented. Regards, Philip

Posted By MickN OK Tabs I agree, the system I describe is flawed and should have flexibility. I would, however, suggest that it is representative of many workplaces and workpractices. I want a world where we have the right balance between the safety professional and a competent workforce. Philip, Thanks for your reply, I have downloaded the file and although I'm now off home, I'm looking forward to reading it as it looks to be just what I'm looking for. See you all tomorrow. Mick

Posted By John A Wright Mick, Maybe you are reading too much into the incident and getting confused, as you now say the tradesman was not allowed to use a ladder, yet earlier you said he WOULDN'T use it because it would take him too long. Can't be both, eh? Anyway, I'm pleased that you are taking a positive approach to the responses here. I hope you see that H&S is not the real problem, but how some people interpret it and deal with it. John W

Posted By MT Good post Pete, which raises the question in my mind "Where did the message that ladders are banned come from?". There's probably one camp we can definitely point a finger at, and that would be the press. I'm trying not to make a sweeping generalisation or denigrate people for their choice of reading material, but could it be fair to say that tradesmen who don't have access to professional H&S advice, perhaps the self-employed or small companies, most likely read the red-tops and therefore have believed the anti-'elf 'n' safety stories? To be fair, the WAH regs clearly do not say that ladders are banned, nor does any of the WAH info on the HSE website. Good advice is out there if people look in the right place, but people seem to be making poor choices about where to get their information from.

Posted By MickN Pete, I'm glad that you see my point here. I frequently find that where I allow a little latitude with regard to individual responsibility and where I alter my approach to H&S situations I find that I get back so much more in return. I guess this is what I've been driving at here. Philip, I read the piece you referred to above and I found it to be a valuable insight and one I happen to agree with. I do believe that H&S has natural limits with respect to what is achievable. To break through those limits, in my opinion, we need to look at the psychology of what we do. Why do we do it this way? For those who think I'm nuts, and from the comments above there are a few, it's important to note that what I'm referring to here has it's place in the H&S professionals' armoury. Safety management systems, documentation and certification, disciplinary procedures and actually walking the job and talking to people are of paramount importance, providing the foundation to a solid safety department. I simply worry that we can wrap ourselves up in bureaucracy to the point where we remove the ability of the individual to influence his own H&S in a positive way. John W, I found your comments to be unhelpful and pedantic. Happy Friday All Mick

Posted By Mitch Hear hear Heather,

Posted By Phil Errup Not specifically related, but i thought is was funny. Our warehouse operative uses a broom to dislodge the waste, that will not budge in a tipper bin (the sort an FLT lifts to height) when it refuses to fall naturally into a skip. I am introducing safety to the business, and have gone through risk assessments etc (mine eyes glaze over)... so when I mentioned PUWER, PPE, manual handling and the other regulations to consider ... it was so evident that behind the poor chaps eyes, lay a mixture of pain, disbelief, depression... the works. All I could say to him was, do it once, learn from it, and remember what you learn. It didn't have any effect. Oh well, Onwards and upwards

Posted By Martin Mulholland MickN You state that "we take(n) too much responsibility away from the individual" and in some cases I agree with you. However, it is very important to ensure that systems of work are monitored, as not all workers demonstrate competency all of the time. This is obvious from your comment that you "recently came across a tradesman standing on a small, unsteady cable drum". Sensible systems need to be in place so that workers understand where they can use their own judgement and where site rules need to be complied with. Establishing a system, communicating it effectively and then enforcing non-compliance is the best way to secure a sensible safety culture.

Posted By Pete48 Can I just clarify again here that the world of construction and other activity does not only occur in the rarified atmosphere of systems, controls, audits etc. I would hazard a guess that far more people are at risk from work at height in situations and areas well away from such matters. They often only come into contact with such situations where they know someone who works on a large site, or they used to work on large contracts or they get visited by a local authority inspector. Yes they read the papers and listen to the TV but they are unlikely to visit the HSE website. ( as a matter of interest only 1 in the last 50 small business people I have asked even knew the HSE site existed, let alone visited it. A trench of generalisation in this paragraph, I accept, but please see as being used to demonstrate a point. There are other examples such as inductions before entry to site. I was talking to a small business man the other day. He was visiting site to vegetation spray a small area of ground in a large site. He and his 2 men had to endure a two hour induction in order to complete 20 minutes work? And most of the induction was either irrelevant to him or he already knew it because he had done managing safely. He was very explicit about how modern, systems based safety is castrating individual responsibility and initiative. He told me that he suggested to the site operator that next time he would rather pay to have a site guide to keep him on their straight and narrow; it would cost him far less!! So it is all well and good saying the law says, improve the systems, audit them to hell and back and even splitting hairs about the nature of the question. But the situation that Mick described is very real and happening right now in x places across the UK. Do we really think the answer is systems and professional safety advice? Important though they are I am not sure that they are suitable and sufficient to cover the sorts of situations I describe. I often think wistfully of the days when most legislation and codes were a touch more prescriptive. I wonder what the outcome would have been if we had developed laws that more explicitly dealt with issue of use of stepladders and ladders? It was always going to be the alligator pit of the changes, was it not? And for the pedants, yes I know but I have left it in to see if you spot it?

Posted By Carolc I agree that it is the interpretation and application by certain people that is making life difficult and, dare I say it, creating a climate where H&S will be treated with contempt instead of respect. My company has a division that works as specialist subbies on large construction sites (a finishing trade). A large number of sites have simply ordered a blanket ban on stepladders and require the use of the podium towers as suggested by jmc. I have found on occasions that although I have presented the PC with a risk assessment giving all of the various reasons why a stepladder is actually a safer more appropriate tool for the job than the pod, we have still been required by the site manager enforcing his company's site rules to use the pods. What's the point of a risk assessment if you are going to be told to use a more hazardous method?