We have a situation where the roof our building which we own has been rented to various mobile phone companies to alllow them to have phone mast in place. My problem is that they turn up unannounced to carryout maintenance work and have no safe sysytems of work available which can be checked prior to the work proceeding. I have now been asked if we need these documents and where is it written down to say that we need to see dcoumentation to prior to access to the work area.

Many Thanks

Paul

Paul - your company has a contract with the ones that site their masts.
It should also state in the contract about level and frequency of maintenance and this requires to be controlled by your company as the duty holder / site owner
Dig out the contract and see what it says - then as CFT says, treat them like any other contractor.
They need permission to come on site, they should produce risk assessments etc and their procedures should not interfere with your own.
Documentation to refer to? HASAWA - sect 3 and 4
Then Management Regs, WAH Regs etc

David

Julien,
I would think that your company has responsibility under section 3 of the HASAWA.
They will need to understand this prior to signing any agreements.
Regards,
Steve

I'm going to disagree with everyone here. I wouldn't get too involved in their systems and what they are doing. They would be expected to be competent in their field of work, their work is probably outside your expertise.

We rent a business unit from the council they don't ask for our H&S systems for the work we will be doing inside.
What i believe you should concentrate on is insuring that the roof and the access ways are safe as they are classed as a workplace.
The only way i would see you getting prosecuted is if an accident occurred from a defect in the premises that is under your control. e.g. if someone gets exposed to asbestos which you didn't make the operators aware of etc.

David,

Much the same way If I came onto your site now, you would have the duty of care for my safety!

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If you rented a part of my building, then i would not have a duty of care for your safety apart from the my reponsiblities under section 4 of HASWA & Welfare regs. If you had an accident from working in an unsafe manner in your rented part of the building under your companies control & supervision, it is doubtful i would get prosecuted, unless it was as i stated in my earlier post.

I can't think of any case law to the contrary. The key word here is who controls the work.

CJ

I must say you are quite incorrect ... in-so-far as the comparison you make between the OP's situation and the one in which you have compared it.

To be clear, this is either a multi-occupancy building, or one in which the 'tenant' or 'lease holder' does NOT assume compete responsibility for access & egress, nor for protective measures - if indeed the measures are not engineered and it is by-way-of restraint/arrest anchors. The premises owner will be responsible, vis the inclusion of the OLA as some yard stick to consider among others.

The OP also stated 'a building of which we own' which is altogether different to the comparison you make. Even on the assumption that you have a fully repairing fully maintaining lease (which one might doubt given it is council premises) there is still a duty to ensure what was leased to you is fit for purpose.

It is not so much what you have said that is incorrect, it is the comparison you make between the two situations.

I certainly stand by my own response to Paul that he does indeed have legal duties to consider prior to permitting access to his roof that he will be in control of and carry with it both legal liabilities and almost total responsibility for landlord controlled areas. One of which in this case is the roof.

CFT

I fully accept that there would be landlord would have responsibility for safe access to the tenants area, i stated that in both my posts. And yes any risks from each others work to the other will have to be communicated & controlled, but in CFT's post he states that they should be treated like any other contractor and their actual work should be monitored, which is incorrect.

CFT you seem to class the roof as a landlord controlled area while i class it as a tenant controlled area.

If a contractor was coming onto the roof which my company owns to repair the airconditioning to my office then i agree that they must be monitored checked for competency etc, as it comes under my companys control & undertaking and we have a duty of care for them.

But if the roof is rented out to another company which controls it and that company works on their own telecoms equipment up there, which my company have no control over, then it does not come under my company's undertaking and we do not have to monitor their work.

cj

As I stated earlier and which you refer to, the roof is an area of responsibility for the building owner/landlord or management company depending on how the agreement between all relevant parties has been structured.

Working processes or systems of safe work are indeed the responsibility of said contractor. They are not however responsible for the roof/area as in similar demised areas that a.n other tenant may lease. Whilst a roof is indeed fit for the purpose of keeping out the elements and putting a hat on the overall structure, it is by the very nature of what and where it is situated - a potentially hazardous place and one in which a building owner/manager must take responsibility for. Indeed, further, as I mentioned earlier on, the protection whilst accessing must indeed be a robust one when WAH cannot be eliminated and clearly in this situation it cannot.

Having consulted heavily to this very nature of industry for a decade or so, and given expert witness testimony to same, I can confidently state in this case based upon information provided by the OP there are legal responsibilities that he must address.

I also guess, it is highly unlikely that Paul is not competent to understand the ramifications of working with live electrical circuits that may or may not be isolatable via the main supply boards (although in this situation I would expect to see full isolation achievable from stand alone supply units on the roof) and working at height procedures, or perhaps more to the point preventing a fall from height.

As to the technical procedure for maintaining the equipment - he could quite easily be excused from not knowing all the 'ins-and-outs,' as I sincerely doubt it would be at all relevant in confirming that the safe system of working is an acceptable one.

Of course quite conversely regarding a documented SSOW from this type of contractor or say BT (Open Reach) gas and so on; they know full well that anyone in control of these types of premises are likely to ask prior to permitting access. I have always required this information when right to do so, and thus far, in many years I have never come across a situation when the information was not available, (usually PDF's) that arrive within minutes electronically.

These few basic control measures could well prevent harm from occurring. Yes, actual words used on many an occasion from a fatality investigation in almost identical circumstances.

CFT

Agree with above post - we have electricity company who send sub-contractors onto our land to carry out tree surgery in vicinity of their overhead cables running across our fields.. We as the landowners set the controls as to reporting in and leaving, where work was to be carried out etc and carried out a site induction/orientation with the electricity company rep initially and now do the same when their sub-contractors come on site. The biggest pain is that it seems to be a different team of sub-contractors that comes on site every time!! However at the end of the day we have a responsiblity for ensuring they are not exposed to risks from our activities and vice-versa - well that's what I think.

Ray

I take it you realise you popped the next key to the 7 when you mentioned the OLA?

CFT

It was the referencing to the OLA 1958, which is why I thought you keyed the 8 instead of a 7.

Regards

CFT

I think my difference of opinion with some posts only really comes down to one factor.
Who is the Occupier of the roof under the OLA act's?

The rooftops i have visited are locked off and access controled by the mobile phone company, they then install suitable edge protection or demarcation, they provide rubber not slip matting on the desginated walkways, they barrier off exclusion zones from where the RF levels exceed ICNIRP, install a stub tower whose access they control (i.e The building owner isn't allowed to climb it), they install warning signs and detail mandatory PPE e.g. RF Monitors for persons to acess the roof.

Who has control over that place of work?

In my opinion the person who has control over the premises (i.e the roof) and would be classed as the occupier under the OLA Acts is the mobile phone company.

As I stated earier I have not seen case law to sugguest otherwise.