Your opinion(s) on this would be appreciated please.... ! College hosting a fairly large public event - senior management have to come to me asking for a risk assessment on hiring a scissor lift capable of lifting 15m into the air - for families to get a 'panoramic view' of the site. Hire company will provide machine and operator. College will provide member of staff as 'guide'. My first thoughts are - are you crazy? ! Children - no way, could fall through the rails. Not wanting to be a killjoy and ruin all the fun, I have actually given some thought to whether we could do this for adults only, subject to all the HSE guidelines being in place and insisting that harnesses are worn in addition. However, my opinion is still that this is something we should not even be considering - complete inappropriate use of the equipment which is not designed as some kind of fairground ride. What do you all think? Am I being over the top.....?

It does throw up other issues though. a) high winds - stop using. b) access to the scissor mechanism - completely barrier off the "ride". c) access and egress - these things are not the easiest to get in and out of, certainly not if you want to keep your post frock or best casual gear in one piece. They will have had a hard life on construction sites so plenty of scratches and dents to catch unwary hands. Out of interest, have they compared the cost against that of a normal, fit for purpose, fairground ride? I suspect when you take into account the hire of additional barriers, access steps and safety signs it may not be much cheaper. At the least the fairground ride operator carries everything they need on their wagons.

Thanks all so far....still not sure what to do with this one ! The idea with the harnesses was just another level of control - for the reasons given above, public have no training etc. Would still be very twitchy about children being allowed in the platform. And where would we stand with our member of staff ? Should they be trained ?

This might kill the idea once and for all - working capacity. A quick google for a 15m scissor lift gives you this - http://www.ukplatforms.co.uk/product_h15sxl.htm Capacity is 500kg. If we say a big stout chap weighs in at 100kg that would be a maximum of 5 folks up there, 3 if you take away the operator and teacher. That would generate some pretty big queues - especially when you start asking folks how much they weigh.

Thanks Stevie - a good point, already checked it out and the hire company reckons max of 4 - so with the operator and member of staff we could only take 2 people up at a time. It all seems pretty pointless and a massive headache for me, but I don't want to just say no without a good reason and just because its a lot of work. I like the idea about hiring some kind of fairground equipment, we do do this for other events and I would feel happier about using something that I would feel would be more fit for purpose. Thinking of the worst case scenario - if something goes wrong surely the first question would be why on earth were we using industrial access equipment? No one on this site is competent to supervise this.

I can't help but post this as it is a piece of 'useless' information I learned last year. Following a cluster of fatalities at fairgrounds in 2000 the HSC commisioned a report in 2001, reviewing the H&S at funfairs, they concluded that the risks to the public at funfairs was very small with the risk of death at 1 in 83 million, this was a pessimistic number as included deaths not directly attributed to rides such as heart attacks whilst not on rides. Statistically fairgrounds are safer than driving a car or riding a bike, and that you are 8 times more likley to die on the way to the fairground than at it. Attendance at A&E is much higher for bouncy castles than fairgrounds. On another note I attended a H&S seminar last year where one of the exhibitors was an equipment hire company. They were offering us H&S professionals rides up in a piece of lifting equipment (not a scissor lift) to get an aerial view. As I don't have a head for heights my boss and colleague went up. Great view then the lift broke down and it took a while and a few panicked looks from the company as they tried to revive the machine to get them back down!!

Why not try the local fire brigade? They may turn up with a high level platform and offer free rides. They would have an operator in the cage with one on the ground. This will go higher than any MEWP and be much safer and more exciting for the kids. However a donation would be helpful.