Posted By Tabs ACOP's and Industry Standards (BS for example, IEE for another) do not have legal status beyond setting the expected benchmark. Generally the Court would accept that you were doing what the law required if you proved you were following them. You are free, however to do things differently if you think you know better. The trouble starts when you try and prove that what you were doing is better than the published guidance. Some things clearly will be - because ACOP's tend to be conservative and a minimum often exceeded. A typical example is lighting - the modern office often is far brighter than HSG38 or CIBSE levels for general office work ... A court will not penalise you for providing 500 lux instead of 200 lux. We do daily water treatment/monitoring despite modern plant - far in excess of L8 guidance, and possibly a waste of money but we have set a very high standard and want to continue it. You would be foolish not to at least follow L8 though. So, no, not law - just very good advice that the courts will expect you to take or better.

Posted By Richard Beevers Halsowen, On their own BSI, SEMA or any other industry standards couldn't be used to prove you've breached the law. They might be persuasive e.g. your crane didn't meet BS 7271 so it was poor practise. But your crane could still comply with the minimum standards of the LOLER ACoP. ACoPs are - comply with this and you'll be doing enough. Other standards are - compy with this, and you'll probably be well above the ACoP. I've never seen a BSI standard being cited in court judgements for companies failing to meet the law. Al.

Posted By Richard Beevers Garry, I'm not a scaffolding specialist, but I'd be asking: 1. Were the torque values the sole reason for the collapse (i.e. all other contruction, designing, training of operatives, inspection being 100%). 2. If 1 is 'Yes', did the company know - i.e. were they negligent? 3. If they didn't, would it have been reasonable practicable / obvious that there was a problem? Would you have been able to see the problem with the component? Let me know your thoughts, but I don't think one single departure form a standard would be sufficient for a criminal prosecution.

Posted By Dave Daniel British Standards, HSE guidance and other industry codes cannot legally be used in a court of law to prove guilt. Unlike an ACOP, they are not "authoritative". If the prosecution try to introduce them, you can legitimately object. There are parts of the Corporate Manslaughter Acts which suggest that guidance can be introduced or considered by the courts, but there are already legal doubts about the validity of this matter. Is someone faced with a manslaughter charge to be judged against some obscure note published by a minor government department without consultation or other concurrence from a senior level? The HSE used to have a policy statement however that said they would not prosecute where a BS is followed, as an informal understanding. I personally have my doubts that some ACOP's are admissable on the grounds of Ultra Vires - i.e they go beyond interpretation of the regulations and their intended purpose. This legal argument has never been pursued as most ACOP's are too vague to provide any useful evidence anyway. On the point that using BS is always best, I can recall looking at the BS and ANSI standards on laser safety when we installed the first metal-cutting 5-axis laser machining system in Rover & the UK back in the 1980's. Both standards at the time recommended basically locking the operator in the room with the laser and using safeguards to keep others out. For a laser that could melt through a brick wall in 10 seconds this seemed inappropriate and against all safety principles. It was aimed at a laboratory environment and even there would not stand muster. I chucked both standards in the bin and we devised our own standards based on "proper" safeguarding principles. Moral: Any standard is only as good as the people that wrote it and the use they intended it for.

Posted By Halesowen Baggie The following has been taken from the HSE enforcement section of its website. http://www.hse.gov.uk/en...de/court/rules/prove.htm Advance rebuttal In cases involving practicability or reasonable practicability, it is advisable to adduce evidence of INDUSTRY STANDARDS ETC. during the prosecution case to show what was reasonably practicable (despite the fact that the onus of proving reasonable practicability is on the defendant). This is because the opportunity to do so may be lost once the prosecution case has closed. The court will need to assess the extent of the defendant's blameworthiness, as this may affect sentence 6. You should show that the defendant could have taken more steps than were taken. This is known as `advance rebuttal' and has been recognised by the courts as such I read the above as standards can be used in court, but I wasnt taught this?

Posted By Andy Petrie Standards represent good practice and should be followed where reasonably practicable to do so. I have no problem with deviating from standards as long have you have made a concious decision to do so and recorded the reasons why you made that decision, preferably showing that the risks associated with the deviation are still ALARP.

Posted By Garry Adams Andy I concur, in many situations your seinario may be deemed sufficient to control the hazard, however, for the purposes of controlling and verifying suffician frictural stres has beenapplied to a Scaffold node point to the British Standard. The problem I have with controlling a risk to ALARP is... Given that the mode of application for deploying Scaffold Component Parts is manual and therefore open to human error. Thre is calibration/mechcancal engineering control mechanisim to regulate the torque value applyed to the compoment. If there is no visual or audible indication of the operator of the Spanner toidentify that he/she has reached the optimum required torque it would be difficult to use a base bench mark ALARP pilosiphy. Perhaps this engineering critical calculation should be reviewed and re-categorised as a Statutory requirement, given that the Inspecton of Scaffolds fall into this category. Garry...