Could anyone give a little advice please? The company I work for has recently been pulled up by our external auditor for not having a copy of the testing and maintenance certificate for a passenger lift. We are renting an office within a building which houses the lift in question. We do not own the building or perform any maintenance, simply rent and use the office space and associated facilities. When this was raised, my viewpoint was that under LOLER we were not the duty holder responsible for the lift and that was the landlord / facility managers role. The auditor said that under HASAWA section 2, we have a duty to ensure that the lift was safe to use for our staff. At this point, we were then required to stop using the lift, put up signs to that effect and make people walk up the stairs until we have obtained a copy of the certificate from the landlord. This with no thought process to those using the stairs and how deliveries were meant to be carried to the office.

Could someone else give me their opinion on this? Mine is that all of this is the responsibility of the landlord under LOLER and under section 3 of HASAWA. This has caused some heated debate in the company (especially by those forced to use the stairs) and is, in my opinion, only aiding in the demise of sensible health and safety management.

In my view this is a typical 'jobsworth' approach by an auditor who is concentrating on paper to the exclusion of sense. Of course it's right that you should understand and have confidence in your landlord's safe & healthy management of the premises - that is the important thing, not whether you have a particular piece of paper.

How was it that an external auditor has the power to tell you what notices to put up, or what your instructions to staff must be? The purpose of auditing is to help the auditee improve - maybe you need to be a little better connected to your landlord's H&S systems but, unless there was some evidence of serious and imminent danger, banning use of the lift until you have the right piece of paper isn't a proportional approach.

If you or another person in your organisation are an IOSH member, there is perhaps a case for speaking with the organisation that provides such 'audit' services to discover:
- Do their H&S auditors have any H&S qualifications? If not, why are they considered competent to carry out such audits?
- If the person does have an initial qualification, is it backed up by membership of a professional body (not necessarily IOSH) and H&S-relared CPD plans and records?
- If you don't get satisfactory responses, recommend to your management that they contract with an audit organisation that does have such standards - there are plenty about.
- If the auditor was an IOSH member (I do hope not!), you could point out that IOSH are committed to 'sensible H&S', and ask his organisation for an explanation of his behaviour in the light of that.

If I had audited you (and I have significant experience in the field, though not specifically of lifts for some time) and judged that you were taking the competence of the landlord a bit too much for granted, I might have used your lack of knowledge about the lift examination & testing as an example of a possible more general need to improve. But the resulting actions would be for you to decide. Obviously, if a little probling by you reveals some concerns, the liaison arrangements you set up would need to be more robust than if that probing shows a high level of competence - in which case you might agree that they tell you about issues by exception, rather than swamping you with paper to prove that all is well!

I trust this helps.

Browns

Are you the only occupant of the building?

If you landlord is responsible for maintaining the building etc the you may be correct that the LOLAR duty is theirs, but if your staff are using the lift don't you ask for a copy of the report?

I know we all use communal lifts in public building etc and trust that the inspections have been done, but if it was a lift in my place of work I think I would be asking for the report

I would sack your auditor.

In my view a totally overboard reaction and suggestion/instruction from your auditor.

From how you describe your builing occupancy, you are not in control of the building lift. Therefore you don't need a copy of the lift inspection certificate. You are not the duty holder, you are correct in that view.

I think even the 18001 compliance clause is a bit of a red herring (4.5.2 - boblewis post)

In my experience of 18001, you only need certificates etc that form part of your company safety management system i.e. for equipment that you control/operate etc.

Not expecting the lifts to be used because you don't have a piece of paper is quite ridculous.

At most I would expect a simple confirmation email/fax from your landlord saying when the lift was inspected. But even having that, does it really change anything?

Firstly, many thanks to all that have taken the time and effort to reply. I’d like to clarify a couple of things that people have commented upon now that I have some more information. We have absolutely no responsibilities for any maintenance etc under our tenancy agreement and we do share the building with other people. However, we are the only company on the first floor which the lift services as the building is only two storeys. Having had some more discussions with those people audited, the decision to not use the lift etc was a bit of a knee jerk reaction by the office manager to be given a non-conformance and not an instruction from the auditor so yes, this was our “own daft decision”. However, the auditor did accept this as closure for the “non-conformance”. From my own experience, I normally relish audits (sad, I know) as I see them as a good tool for improvement, as Imwaldra mentioned. We are actually a construction company, with much higher risk activities that our management system is focussed on controlling (which were not inspected as part of the audit which is a real disappointment). I would agree with the statement that the actions taken, and their acceptance, were totally disproportionate to the risk and I think that this particular instance has only succeeded in devaluing safety management (which has a bad enough time at the moment already) and made our staff dread the next audit. To finish with another question, if the lift was to fail and cause an injury, who would the HSE prosecute, the lift owner under HASAWA sections 3 and 4 or us under section 2?

This sounds like an purely office environment so it would probably be the Local Authority Environmental Health Department and not the HSE who are the enforcing authority that would make any prosecution decision.

I tend to agree with jj that the landlord would be the most likely target but could there be a Regulation 11 Management offence - Co-operation and co-ordination - the land lord may not be an employer but the guidance does make reference to the person in control of a multy-occupancy workplace.

My original comment was more about how you would feel if an incident occurred and you had not checked the correct inspection and servicing was being undertaken. While this may not be reasonably practicable in many situations in the one describe I think it would be.

Brian

My question about prosecutions wasn't a means to try and defend the companys position in this instance, more a personal intrest. For quite some time now, the interpretation of HASAWA sect 2 has intreged me in that how far do you take this, or indeed are expected to? If someone has been given responsibility for an action or duty, then at what point do you say get on with it or then stand over their shoulder to ensure they have done it? In the instance of our lift, it has been suggested that not only do we get a copy of the test certificate, but then we programme in regular emails / letters to the landlord to remind him to get the lift tested close to the expiry date in case he forgets to send us a copy. At what point do people start taking responsibility for their own actions? When I originally got into the safety profession, I was under the impression that you took control and managed the aspects of your work that you had a direct control and infuence over. If someone employed by your company under contract to have responsibilites, who then does not fulfill them, then they are at fault are they not? In the example given by boblewis, I would agree with him that the garage was at fault as it was their hoist that they had failed to have maintained. In our situation, if we were the buidling owners then yes, I would fully expect to have management arrangements in place for the checking of the lift, but it is not our bulding. I starting to feel a bit sorry for the chaps who own the Shard in London who may be inundated with LOLER certificate requests by the potentially hundreds of companies working there. I find this all very interesting....

Thanks again to everyone who has responded, your posts have all been very worth while. Apologies for going off on a tangent and having a rant over responsibilities! Peter G, I couldn't agree more with your last post. In the absence of a legionella test certificate, should we stop people turning the taps on? Perhaps the subject of another topic. Its been great getting everyones take on this and has really helped in identifying what we need to do to integrate this into our management system. Cheers !

The follow up question was asking about who would be prosecuted - not about an an employee putting in a civil personal injury claim against the employer.

RTFQ!

We are in a similar position and currently going through 18001 certification. At stage one, the auditor identified the need for us to confirm the building manager carry out their duty with regard to the lift. Building Manager requested a copy of the inspection cert from head office. It didn't arrive by the end of the audit, but accepting that the landlord appear to be carrying out their duties, no non conformance was issued, just a comment that even though we are confident that the landlord does the necesary, we should check and ask for evidence as we do have a duty to our employees who use the facility. I do have a copy for the first day of stage two which is tomorrow!