If a company employs their own electrician and heating engineer for example, would they increase their liability in the event of an accident/incident?

Obviously you would want to ensure that competence is validated accordingly, systems are in place for such work (suitable sufficient RA, PTW, etc). I'm thinking purely in terms of the alternative being to contract the work out.

I agree with Ron, in h&s law an employer has a duty to protect both employees and non-employees. For some isues there may be less onus, supplying PPE for example, however this is offset by virtue of employees are more likely to be more careful than contractors.

It primarily depends upon the degree of control you currently exercise over your current contractors to carry out the maintainence.

You currently have liablility in selecting competent contractors and having a monitoring system to ensure that they perform as per the contrcatual terms.

However, it is most likely that it will be the contractors employer that will have to train the contractors and in most cases provide them with Safe Systems of Work, risk assessments, tools, PPE, etc. For example, it is very common now that a lot of manitainenece is outsoursed to very competent & reputable Facilities Management companies. If that is the case, what is done is that an element of the risk and therefore liability is "transferred" to the Facilities Management Company. That is not to say that the client has no liability at all.

You make a good point, I do often wonder if people really mean liability, or responsibility, for instance in a post above "You currently have liablility in selecting competent contractors" - what does that actually mean? There seems to be a body of opinion that seems to be able to pinpoint liability so easily, whereas it often isn't so simple to do so, and is often ultimately the subject of extensive debate in courts.

Bit of a worrying thought process as far as I'm concerned.

I struggle to comprehend anyone considering contracting out maintenance work just so that they can reduce 'liability'.

I agree with clairel here; Who carries out the work is irrelevant to the Employers' responsibilites under H&S law and so their liability is the same in that context - you cannot 'blame' a contractor that did the work and expect that this in any way reduces your responsibilities when compared to a direct Employee.

This is also somewhat a grey area, as often some 'contractors' are actually deemed to be Employees in law, depending on the level of control exercised by the Employer.

I feel that there is misunderstanding here in the use of the term "Liability" and in my view has been used instead of "risk". I very much doubt that all contractors activities at a site are the PRIMARY LIABILITY of the client in context of employers duties in law.

It is very much dependent upon the nature of the relationship between the contractor and the client and the degree of control the client has on the day to day arrangements of the contractor.

As mentioned previously, a significant amount of maintainence nowadays is carried out on large premises/sites ( and also increasingly on smaller sites) , sometimes for a single client/single employer on site by a "Total Facilities Management Contractor". In such circumstances, the primary employer-employee relationship is between the Total Facilities Managemnent Contractor Organisation and its direct employees and/or its sub-contractors. Obviously, the client has HASAWA Section 3 & 4 duties.

One has the balance the "risk" ( and the associated liability) of having an outsourced service compared to an in-house one. The answer to this is that it is dependent upon case-by case basis--there isnt a universal answer to that.

To summarise, many organisations have indeed transferred a proportion of their direct risks (and it associated liabilities) to Facilities Management Contractors.

The key criteria that will determine whether under health and safety legislation, the client also has employer duties in law is the degree of control exercised over the contractor(s) in their day to day arrangements!